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AN OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY OF 
CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY 

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NOW READY 
A Critical Introduction to the New Testament 

By Arthur Samuel Peake, D.D. 

Faith and Its Psychology 

By the Rev. William R. Inge, D.D. 
Philosophy and Religion 

By the Rev. Hastings Rashdall, D.Litt. COxon), 
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Revelation and Inspiration 

By the Rev. James Orr, D.D. 
Christianity and Social Questions 

By the Ven. W. Cunningham, F.B.A., D.D., D.Sc. 
Christian Thought to the Reformation 

By Herbert B. Workman, D.Litt. 
Protestant Thought Before Kant 

By A. C. McGiFFERT, Ph.D., D.D. 

An Outline of the History of Christian Thought 
Since Kant 
By Edward Caldwell Moore, D.D. 

The Christian Hope: A Study in the Doctrine of 
Immortality 

By William Adams Brown, Ph.D., D.D. 

IN PREPARATION 

Redemption and Atonement 

By the Right Rev. the Bishop of Gloucester 
A Critical Introduction to the Old Testament 

By the Rev. George Buchanan Gray, D.D., D.Litt. 



AN OUTLINE OF THE 

HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN 
THOUGHT SINCE KANT 



BY 

EDWARD CALDWELL MOORE 

PARKMAN PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
1912 



>1 



^pno 



TO 

ADOLF HARNACK 

ON HIS SIXTIETH BIRTHDAY 
BT HIS FIRST AMERICAN PUPIL 



PREFATORY NOTE 

It is hoped that this book may serve as an outline for a 
larger work, in which the judgments here expressed may be 
supported in detail. Especially, the author desires to treat 
the literature of the social question and of the modernist 
movement with a fulness which has not been possible within 
the limits of this sketch. The philosophy of rehgion and 
the history of religions should have place, as also that 
estimate of the essence of Christianity which is suggested 
by the contact of Christianity with the living religions of 
the Orient. 

Pas QUE Island, Mass., 
Jtdy 28, 1911. 



CONTENTS 




CHAPTER I 
A.— Introduction, . . . . • 


PAGE 
1 


B.— The Background, . . • • 


. 23 


DEISM, ...••. 


.23 


RATIONALISM, . • . • 


. 25 


PIETISM, ..... 


. 30 


AESTHETIC IDEALISM, • . 


. 33 


CHAPTER II 




Idealistic Philosophy, .... 


• 39 


KANT, • • • • • 


. 39 


fichte, ..... 


. 56 


SCHELLING, ..... 


. 60 


HEGEL, . . . . • 


. 66 



CHAPTER III 

Theological Reconstruction, , 

schleiermacher, . . . 

ritschl and the ritschlians, 



74 

74 
89 



CHAPTER IV 








The Critical and Historical Movement, 






110 


STRAUSS, .... 






114 


BAUR, .... 






118 


THE CANON, . . 






123 


THE LIFE OF JESUS,. 






127 


THE OLD TESTAMENT, . . 






. 130 


THE HISTORY OF DOCTRINE,. 






. 136 


HARNACK, . . . , 






. 140 



ix 



HISTOEY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT 



CHAPTER V 

The Contribution of the Sciences, 
positivism, . 

naturalism and agnosticism, 
evolution, 
miracles, . 

THE SOCIAL SCIENCES, 



CHAPTER VI 
The English-speaking Peoples ; Action and Reaction, 

THE POETS, . • 

COLERIDGE, 

THE ORIEL SCHOOL, 

ERSKINE AND CAMPBELL, 

MAURICE, . 

CHANNING, . 

BUSHNELL, . 

THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL, 

THE OXFORD MOVEMENT, 

NEWMAN, 

MODERNISM, . 

ROBERTSON, . 

PHILLIPS BROOKS, 

THE BROAD CHURCH, 

CARLTLE, . 

EMERSON, . 

ARNOLD, 

MARTINEAU, 

JAMES, 

Bibliography, 
Jndex, , t 



AN OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY OF 
CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT 



AN OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY OF 
CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT 

CHAPTER I 

A.— Introduction 

The Protestant Reformation marked an era both in life and 
thought for the modern world. It ushered in a revolution 
in Europe. It established distinctions and initiated ten- 
dencies which are still significant. These distinctions have 
been significant not for Europe alone. They have had in- 
fluence also upon those continents which since the Refor- 
mation have come under the dominion of Europeans. Yet 
few would now regard the Reformation as epoch-making 
in the sense in which that pre-eminence has been claimed. 
No one now esteems that it separates the modem from the 
mediaeval and ancient world in the manner once supposed. 
The perspective of history makes it evident that large areas 
of life and thought remained then untouched by the new 
spirit. Assumptions which had their origin in feudal or even 
in classical culture continued unquestioned. More than this, 
impulses in rational life and in the interpretation of religion, 
which showed themselves with clearness in one and another 
of the reformers themselves, were lost sight of, if not actually 
repudiated, by their successors. It is possible to view msniy 
things in the intellectual and religious life of the nineteenth 
century, even some which Protestants have passionately re- 
probated, as but the taking up again of clues which the 
reformers had let fall, the carrying out of purposes of their 
movement which were partly hidden from themselves. 

A 



2 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

Men have asserted that the Renaissance inaugurated a 
period of paganism. They have gloried that there super- 
vened upon this paganism the reUgious revival which the 
Reformation was. Even these men will, however, not deny 
that it was the intellectual rejuvenation which made the 
religious reformation possible or, at all events, effective. 
Nor can it be denied that after the Reformation, in the Pro- 
testant communions the intellectual element was thrust into 
the background. The practical and devotional prevailed. 
Humanism was for a time shut out. There was more room 
for it in the Roman Church than among Protestants. Again, 
the Renaissance itself had been not so much an era of dis- 
covery of a new intellectual and spiritual world. It had been, 
rather, the rediscovery of valid principles of hfe in an ancient 
culture and civihsation. That thorough-going review of the 
principles at the basis of all relations of the life of man, 
which once seemed possible to Renaissance and Reformation, 
was postponed to a much later date. When it did take place, 
it was under far different auspices. 

There is a remarkable unity in the history of Protestant 
thought in the period from the Reformation to the end of the 
eighteenth century. There is a still more surprising unity 
of Protestant thought in this period with the thought of the 
mediaeval and ancient Church. The basis and methods are 
the same. Upon many points the conclusions are identical. 
There was nothing of which the Protestant scholastics were 
more proud than of their agreement with the Fathers of the 
early Church. They did not perceive in how large degree 
they were at one with Christian thinkers of the Roman 
communion as well. Few seem to have realised how largely 
Catholic in principle Protestant thought has been. The 
fundamental principles at the basis of the reasoning have 
been the same. The notions of revelation and inspiration 
were identical. The idea of authority was common to both, 
only the instance in which that authority is lodged was 
different. The thoughts of God and man, of the world, of 
creation, of providence and prayer, of the nature and means 
of salvation, are similar. Newman was right in discovering 



L] INTRODUCTION 3 

that from the first he had thought, only and always, in 
what he called Catholic terms. It was veiled from him that 
many of those who ardently opposed him thought in those 
same terms. 

It is impossible to write upon the theme which this book 
sets itself without using the terms Catholic and Protestant in 
the conventional sense. The words stand for certain historic 
magnitudes. It is equally impossible to conceal from our- 
selves how misleading the language often is. The line between 
that which has been happily called the religion of authority and 
the religion of the spirit does not run between Catholic and 
Protestant. It runs through the middle of many Protestant 
bodies, through the border only of some, and who will say 
that the Roman Church knows nothing of this contrast ? 
The sole use of recurrence here to the historic distinction is 
to emphasise the fact that this distinction stands for less 
than has commonly been supposed. In a large way the 
history of Christian thought, from earliest times to the end 
of the eighteenth century, presents a very striking unity. 

In contrast with this, that modern reflection which has 
taken the phenomenon known as religion and, specifically, 
that historic form of religion known as Christianity, as its 
object, has indeed also slowly revealed the fact that it is in 
possession of certain principles. Furthermore, these prin- 
ciples, as they have emerged, have been felt to be new and 
distinctive principles. They are essentially modern prin- 
ciples. They are the principles which, taken together, 
differentiate the thinker of the nineteenth century from all 
who have ever been before him. They are principles which 
unite all thinkers at the end of the nineteenth and the 
beginning of the twentieth centuries, in practically every 
portion of the world, as they think of all subjects except 
religion. It comes more and more to be felt that these 
principles must be reckoned with in our thought concerning 
religion as well. 

One of these principles is, for example, that of dealing in 
true critical fashion with problems of history and literature. 
Long before the end of the age of rationalism, this principle 



4 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

had been applied to literature and history, other than 
those called sacred. The thorough-going application of this 
scientific method to the literatures and history of the Old 
and New Testaments is almost wholly an achievement of the 
nineteenth century. It has completely altered the view of 
revelation and inspiration. The altered view of the nature 
of the documents of revelation has had immeasurable conse- 
quences for dogma. 

Another of these elements is the new view of nature and 
of man's relation to nature. Certain notable discoveries in 
physics and astronomy had proved possible of combination 
with traditional religion, as in the case of Newton. Or again, 
they had proved impossible of combination with any religion, 
as in the case of Laplace. The review of the reUgious and 
Christian problem in the Hght of the ever-increasing volume 
of scientific discoveries — this is the new thing in the period 
which we have undertaken to describe. A theory of nature 
as a totality, in which man, not merely as physical, but even 
also as social and moral and religious being, has place in a 
series which suggests no break, has affected the doctrines of 
God and of man in a way which neither those who revered 
nor those who repudiated religion, at the beginning of the 
nineteenth century could have imagined. 

Another leading principle grows out of Kant's distinction 
of two worlds and two orders of reason. That distinction 
issued in a new theory of knowledge. It laid a new foun- 
dation for an idealistic construing of the universe. In one 
way it was the answer of a profoundly religious nature to the 
triviality and effrontery into which the great rationalistic 
movement had run out. By it the philosopher gave standing 
forever to much that pietists and mystics in every age had 
felt to be true, yet had never been able to prove by any 
method which the ordered reasoning of man had provided. 
Religion as feeling regained its place. Ethics was set once 
more in the light of the eternal. The soul of man became 
the object of a scientific study. 

There have been thus indicated three, at least, of the larger 
factors which enter into an interpretation of Christianity 



L] INTRODUCTION 6 

which may fairly be said to be new in the nineteenth century. 
They are new in a sense in which the intellectual elements 
entering into the reconsideration of Christianity in the age 
of the Reformation were not new. They are characteristic 
of the nineteenth century. They would naturally issue 
in an interpretation of Christianity in the general context of 
the life and thought of that century. The philosophical 
revolution inaugurated by Kant, with the general drift toward 
monism in the interpretation of the universe, separates from 
their forebears men who have Hved since Kant, by a greater 
interval than that which divided Kant from Plato. The 
evolutionary view of nature, as developed from Schelling 
and Comte through Darwin to Bergson, divides men now 
Uving from the contemporaries of Kant in his youthful studies 
of nature, as those men were not divided from the followers 
of Aristotle. 

Of purpose, the phrase Christian thought has been inter* 
preted as thought concerning Christianity. The problem 
which this book essays is that of an outline of the history 
of the thought which has been devoted, during this period 
of marvellous progress, to that particular object in conscious- 
ness and history which is known as Christianity. Christi- 
anity, as object of the philosophical, critical, and scientific 
reflection of the age — this it is which we propose to consider. 
Our religion as affected in its interpretation by principles 
of thought which are already widespread, and bid fair to 
become universal among educated men — this it is which 
in this little volume we aim to discuss. The term religious 
thought has not always had this significance. Philosophy 
of religion has signified, often, a philosophising of which 
religion was, so to say, the atmosphere. We cannot wonder 
if, in these circumstances, to the minds of some, the atmo- 
sphere has seemed to hinder clearness of vision. The whole 
subject of the philosophy of religion has within the last few 
decades undergone a revival, since it has been accepted that 
the aim is not to philosophise upon things in general in a 
rehgious spirit. On the contrary, the aim is to consider 
reUgion itself, with the best aid which current philosophy 



6 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ca 

and science afiford. In this sense only can we give the study 
of rehgion and Christianity a place among the sciences. 

It remains true, now as always, that the majority, at all 
events, of those who have thought profoundly concerning 
Christianity will be found to have been Christian men. 
Rehgion is a form of consciousness. It will be those who 
have had experience to which that consciousness corresponds, 
whose judgments can be supposed to have weight. That 
remark is true, for example, of aesthetic matters as well. 
To be a good judge of music one must have musical feeling 
and experience. To speak with any deeper reasonableness 
concerning faith, one must have faith. To think profoundly 
concerning Christianity one needs to have had the Christian 
experience. But this is very different from saying that to 
speak worthily of the Christian religion, one must needs have 
made his own the statements of religion which men of a former 
generation may have found serviceable. The distinction 
between rehgion itself, on the one hand, and the expres- 
sion of religion in doctrines and rites, or the apphcation 
of religion through institutions, on the other hand, is 
in itself one of the great achievements of the nineteenth 
century. It is one which separates us from Christian men 
in previous centuries as markedly as does any other. It is 
a simple imphcation of the Kantian theory of knowledge. 
The evidence for its vahdity has come through the apph- 
cation of historical criticism to all the creeds. Mystics of 
all ages have seen the truth from far. The fact that we may 
assume the prevalence of this distinction among Christian men, 
and lay it at the basis of the discussion we propose, is assuredly 
one of the gains which the nineteenth century has to record. 

It follows that not all of the thinkers with whom we have 
to deal will have been, in their own time, of the number of 
avowedly Christian men. Some who have greatly furthered 
movements which in the end proved fruitful for Christian 
thought, have been men who were in their own time alienated 
from professed and official religion. In the retrospect we 
must often feel that their opposition to that which they took 
to be religion was justifiable. Yet their identification of that 



L] INTRODUCTION 7 

with religion itself, and their frank declaration of what they 
called their own irreligion, was often a mistake. It was a 
mistake to which both they and their opponents in due 
proportion contributed. A still larger class of those with 
whom we have to do have indeed asserted for themselves a 
personal adherence to Christianity. But their identification 
with Christianity, or with a particular Christian Church, 
has been often bitterly denied by those who bore official 
responsibility in the Church. The heresy of one generation 
is the orthodoxy of the next. There is something perverse in 
Gottfried Arnold's maxim, that the true Church, in any age, is 
to be found with those who have just been excommunicated 
from the actual Church. However, the maxim points in the 
direction of a truth. By far the larger part of those with 
whom we have to do have had acknowledged relation to the 
Christian tradition and institution. They were Christians 
and, at the same time, true children of the intellectual life 
of their own age. They esteemed it not merely their privi- 
lege, but also their duty, to endeavour to ponder anew the 
religious and Christian problem, and to state that which they 
thought in a manner congruous with the thoughts which the 
men of the age would naturally have concerning other themes. 
It has been to most of these men axiomatic that doc- 
trine has only relative truth. Doctrine is but a composite 
of the content of the religious consciousness with materials 
which the intellect of a given man or age or nation in the 
total view of life affords. As such, doctrine is necessary and 
inevitable for all those who in any measure live the life of the 
mind. But the condition of doctrine is its mobile, its fluid 
and changing character. It is the combination of a more 
or less stable and characteristic experience, with a reflection 
which, exactly in proportion as it is genuine, is transformed 
from age to age, is modified by qualities of race and, in the 
last analysis, differs with individual men. Dogma is that 
portion of doctrine which has been elevated by decree of 
ecclesiastical authority, or even only by common consent, 
into an absoluteness which is altogether foreign to its nature. 
It is that part of doctrine concerning which men have for- 



8 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

gotten that it had a history, and have decided that it shall 
have no more. In its very notion dogma confounds a state- 
ment of truth, which must of necessity be human, with the 
truth itself, which is divine. In its identification of state- 
ment and truth it demands credence instead of faith. Men 
have confounded doctrine and dogma ; they have been 
taught so to do. They have felt the history of Christian 
doctrine to be an unfruitful and uninteresting theme. But 
the history of Christian thought would seek to set forth the 
series of interpretations put, by successive generations, upon 
the greatest of all human experiences, the experience of the 
communion of men with God. These interpretations ray 
out at all edges into the general intellectual life of the age. 
They draw one whole set of their formative impulses from 
the general intellectual hfe of the age. It is this relation 
of the progress of doctrine to the general history of thought 
in the nineteenth century, which the writer designed to 
emphasise in choosing the title of this work. 

As was indicated in the closing paragraphs of the preceding 
volume of this series, the issue of the age of rationahsm had 
been for the cause of religion on the whole a distressing one. 
The majority of those who were resolved to follow reason 
were agreed in abjuring religion. That they had, as it seems 
to us, but a meagre understanding of what religion is, made 
little difference in their conclusion. Bishop Butler com- 
plains in his Analogy that religion was in his time hardly 
considered a subject for discussion among reasonable men. 
Schleiermacher in the very title of his Discourses makes it 
plain that in Germany the situation was not different. If 
the reasonable eschewed religion, pietists in Germany, evan- 
geUcals in England, the men of the great revivals in America, 
many of them, took up a corresponding position as towards 
the life of reason, especially toward the use of reason in 
religion. The sinister cast which the word rationalism bears 
in much of the popular speech is evidence of this fact. To 
many minds it appeared as if one could not be an adherent 
both of reason and of faith. That was a contradiction which 
Kant, first of all in his own experience, and then through his 



L] INTRODUCTION 9 

system of thought, did much to transcend. The dehverance 
which he wrought has been compared to the dehverance 
which Luther in his time achieved for those who had 
been in bondage to scholasticism in the Roman Church. 
Although Kant has been dead a hundred years, both the 
defence of religion and the assertion of the right of reason are 
still, with many, on the ancient lines. There is no such 
strife between rationality and belief as has been supposed, r 
But the confidence of that fact is still far from being shared 
by all Christians at the beginning of the twentieth century. 
The course in reinterpretation and readjustment of Chris- 
tianity, which that calm conviction would imply, is still far 
from being the one taken by all of those who bear the Christian 
name. If it is permissible in the writing of a book hke this 
to have an aim besides that of the most objective delineation, 
the author may perhaps be permitted to say that he writes 
with the earnest hope that in some measure he may con- 
tribute also to the establishment of an understanding upon 
which so much both for the Church and the world depends. 

We should say a word at this point as to the general relation 
of religion and philosophy. We realise the evil which Kant 
first in clearness pointed out. It was the evil of an appre- 
hension which made the study of religion a department of 
metaphysics. The tendency of that apprehension was to 
do but scant justice to the historical content of Christianity. 
Religion is an historical phenomenon. Especially is this 
true of Christianity. It is a fact, or rather, a vast complex 
of facts. It is a positive religion. It is connected with 
personalities, above all with one transcendent personality, 
that of Jesus. It sprang out of another religion which had 
already emerged into the light of world-history. It has 
been associated for two thousand years with portions of the 
race which have made achievements in culture and left 
record of those achievements. It is the function of specu- 
lation to interpret this phenomenon. When speculation is 
tempted to spin by its own processes something which it 
would set beside this historic magnitude or put in place of 
it, and gtill call that Christianity, we must disallow the 



10 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

claim. It was the licence of its speculative endeavour, and 
the identification of these endeavours with Christianity, 
which finally discredited Hegelianism with reUgious men. 
Nor can it be denied that theologians themselves have been 
sinners in this respect. The disposition to regard Christianity 
as a revealed and divinely authoritative metaphysic began 
early and continued long. When theologians also set out 
to interpret Christianity and end in offering us a substitute, 
which, if it were acknowledged as absolute truth, would do 
away with Christianity as historic fact, as Httle can we allow 
the claim. 

Again, Christianity exists not merely as a matter of history. 
It exists also as a fact in hving consciousness. It is the 
function of psychology to investigate that consciousness. 
We must say that, accurately speaking, there is no such thing 
as Christian philosophy. There are philosophies, good or bad, 
current or obsolete. These are Christian only in being 
applied to the history of Christianity and the content of the 
Christian consciousness. There is, strictly speaking, no such 
thing as Christian consciousness. There is the human con- 
sciousness, operating with and operated upon by the impulse 
of Christianity. It is the great human experience from which 
we single out for investigation that part which is concerned 
with religion, and call that the religious experience. It is 
essential, therefore, that those general investigations of 
human consciousness and experience, as such, which are 
being carried on all about us, should be reckoned with, if 
our Christian life and thought are not altogether to fall out 
of touch with advancing knowledge. For this reason we have 
misgiving about the position of some followers of Ritschl. 
Their opinion, pushed to its limit, seems to mean that we 
have nothing to do with philosophy, or with the advance of 
science. Religion is a feeling of which he alone who pos- 
sesses it can give account. He alone who has it can appreciate 
such an account when given. We acknowledge that religion 
is in part a feeling. But that feeling must have rational 
justification. It must also have rational guidance if it is 
to be saved (vom degenerating into fanaticism. 



I.] INTRODUCTION 11 

To say that we have nothing to do with philosophy ends 
in our having to do with a bad philosophy. In that case we 
have a philosophy with which we operate without having 
investigated it, instead of having one with which we operate 
because we have investigated it. The philosophy of which 
we are aware we have. The philosophy of which we are not 
aware has us. No doubt, we may have religion without 
philosophy, but we cannot formulate it even in the rudest way 
to ourselves, we cannot communicate it in any way what- 
soever to others, except in the terms of a philosophy. In 
the general sense in which every man has a philosophy, this 
is merely the deposit of the regnant notions of the time. It 
may be amended or superseded, and our theology with it. 
Yet while it lasts it is our one possible vehicle of expression. 
It is the interpreter and the critique of what we have ex- 
perienced. It is not open to a man to retreat within himself 
and say, I am a Christian, I feel thus, I think so, these 
thoughts are the content of Christianity. The consequence 
of that position is that we make the religious experience to 
be no part of the normal human experience. If we contend 
that the being a Christian is the great human experience, 
that the religious life is the true human life, we must pursue 
the opposite course. We must make the religious life coherent 
with all the other phases and elements of life. If we would 
contend that religious thought is the truest and deepest 
thought, we must begin at this very point. We must make 
it conform absolutely to the laws of all other thought. To 
contend for its isolation, as an area by itself and a process 
subject only to its own laws, is to court the judgment of men, 
that in its zeal to be Christian it has ceased to be thought. 

Our most profitable mode of procedure would seem to be 
this. We shall seek to follow, as we may, those few main 
movements of thought marking the nineteenth century 
which have immediate bearing upon our theme. We shall 
try to register the effect which these movements have had 
upon religious conceptions. It will not be possible at any 
point to do more than to select typical examples. Perhaps 
the true method is that we should go back to the beginnings 



12 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

of each one of these movements. We should mark the 
emergence of a few great ideas. It is the emergence of an 
idea which is dramatically interesting. It is the moment of 
emergence in which that which is characteristic appears. 
Our subject is far too complicated to permit that the rami- 
fications of these influences should be followed in detail. 
Modifications, subtractions, additions, the reader must make 
for himself. 

These main movements of thought are, as has been said, 
three in number. We shall take them in their chronological 
order. There is first the philosophical revolution which 
is commonly associated with the name of Kant. If we 
were to seek with arbitrary exactitude to fix a date for the 
beginning of this movement, this might be the year of the 
publication of his first great work, Kritik der reinen Ver- 
nunft, in 1781.^ Kant was indeed himself, both intellec- 
tually and spiritually, the product of tendencies which had 
long been gathering strength. He was the exponent of ideas 
which in fragmentary way had been expressed by others, but 
he gathered into himself in amazing fashion the impulses 
of his age. Out from some portion of his works lead almost 
all the paths which philosophical thinkers since his time have 
trod. One cannot say even of his work. Die Religion innerhalb 
der Grenzen der hlossen Vernunft, 1793, that it is the sole 
source, or even the greatest source, of his influence upon 
reUgious thinking. But from the body of his work as a whole, 
there came a new theory of knowledge which has changed 
completely the notion of revelation. There came also a view 
of the universe as an ideal unity which, especially as elabor- 
ated by Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, has radically altered 
the traditional ideas of God, of man, of nature and of their 
relations, the one to the other. 

We shall have then, secondly, to note the historical and 
critical movement. It is the effort to apply consistently and 
without fear the maxims of historical and literary criticism ^ 

1 In tlie text the titles of books which are discussed are given for the first 
time in the language in which they are written. Books which are merely 
alluded to are mentioned in English. 



I.] INTRODUCTION 13 

to the documents of the Old and New Testaments. With 
still greater arbitrariness, and yet with appreciation of the 
significance of Strauss' endeavour, we might set as the date of 
the full impact of this movement upon cherished religious 
convictions, that of the publication of his Leben Jesu, 
1835. This movement has supported with abundant evi- 
dence the insight of the philosophers as to the nature of 
revelation. It has shown that that which we actually have 
in the Scriptures is Just that which Kant, with his reverence 
for the freedom of the human mind, had indicated that we 
must have, if revelation is to be believed in at all. With 
this changed view has come an altered attitude toward many 
statements which devout men had held that they must accept 
as true, because these were found in Scripture. With this 
changed view the whole history, whether of the Jewish people 
or of Jesus and the origins of the Christian Church, has been 
set in a new light. 

In the third place, we shall have to deal with the influence 
of the sciences of nature and of society, as these have been 
developed throughout the whole course of the nineteenth 
century. If one must have a date for an outstanding event 
in this portion of the history, perhaps that of the publication 
of Darwin's Origin of Species, 1859, would serve as well as 
any other. The principles of these sciences have come to 
underlie in a great measure all the reflection of cultivated 
men in our time. In amazing degree they have percolated, 
through elementary instruction, through popular literature, 
and through the newspapers, to the masses of mankind. 
They are recognised as the basis of a triumphant material 
civilisation, which has made everything pertaining to the 
inner and spiritual life seem remote. Through the social 
sciences there has come an impulse to the transfer of em- 
phasis from the individual to society, the disposition to see 
everything in its social bearing, to do everything in the light 
of its social antecedents and of its social consequences. Here 
again we have to note the prof oundest influence upon religious 
conceptions. The very notion connected with the words 
redemption and salvation appears to have been changed. 



14 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

In the case of each of these particular movements the 
church, as the organ of Christianity, has passed through a 
period of antagonism to these influences, of fear of their 
consequences, of resistance to their progress. In large 
portions of the church at the present moment the protest 
is renewed. The substance of these modern teachings, 
which yet seem to be the very warp and woof of the intel- 
lectual life of the modem man, is repudiated and denounced. 
It is held to imperil the salvation of the soul. It is pro- 
nounced impossible of combination with belief in a divinely 
revealed truth concerning the universe and a saving faith 
for men. In other churches, and outside the churches, the 
forms in which men hold their Christianity have been in 
large measure adjusted to the results of these great move- 
ments of thought. They have, as these men themselves 
believe, been immensely strengthened and made sure by those 
very influences which were once esteemed dangerous. 

In connection with this indication of the nature of our 
materials, we have sought to say something of the time of 
emergence of the salient elements. It may be in point also 
to give some intimation of the place of their origins, that is 
to say, of the participation of the various nationalities in this 
common task of the modern Christian world. That inter- 
national quality of scholarship which seems to us natural, 
is a thing of very recent date. That a discovery should 
within a reasonable interval become the property of all 
educated men, that scholars of one nation should proflt by 
that which the learned of another land have done, appears 
to us a thing to be assumed. It has not always been so, 
especially not in matters of religious truth. The Roman 
Church and the Latin language gave to mediaeval Christian 
thought a certain international character. Again the Renais- 
sance and Reformation had a certain world-wide quality. 
The relations of the English Church in the reigns of the last 
Tudors to Germany, Switzerland and France are not to be 
forgotten. But the life of the Protestant national churches 
in the eighteenth century shows little of this trait. The 
barriers of language counted for something. The pro- 



I.] INTRODUCTION 15 

vincialism of national churches and denominational pre- 
dilections counted for more. 

In the philosophical movement we must begin with the 
Germans. The movement of English thought known as 
deism was a distinct forerunner of the rationalist movement, 
within the particular area of the discussion of rehgion. 
However, it ran into the sand. The rationalist movement, 
considered in its other aspects, never attained in England 
in the eighteenth century the proportions which it assumed 
in France and Germany. In France that movement ran its 
full course, both among the learned and, equally, as a radical 
and revolutionary influence among the unlearned. It had 
momentous practical consequences. In no sphere was it 
more radical than in that of religion. Not in vain had 
Voltaire for years cried, ^ Ecrasez Virifdme,* and Rousseau 
preached that the youth would all be wise and pure, if only 
the kind of education which he had had in the religious 
schools were made impossible. There was for many minds 
no alternative between clericalism and atheism. Quite 
logically, therefore, after the downfall of the Republic and of 
the Empire there set in a great reaction. Still it was simply 
a reversion to the absolute religion of the Roman Catholic 
Church as set forth by the Jesuit party. There was no real 
transcending of the rationalist movement in France in the 
interest of religion. There has been no great constructive 
movement in reUgious thought in France in the nineteenth 
century. There is relatively little literature of our subject 
in the French language until recent years. 

In Germany, on the other hand, the rationalist movement 
had always had over against it the great foil and counterpoise 
of the pietist movement. Rationalism ran a much soberer 
course than in France. It was never a revolutionary and 
destructive movement as in France. It was not a dilettante 
and aristocratic movement as deism had been in England. 
It was far more creative and constructive than elsewhere. 
Here also before the end of the century it had run its course. 
Yet here the men who transcended the rationalist movement 
and shaped the spiritual revival in the beginning of the 



-f 



16 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

nineteenth century were men who had themselves been trained 
in the bosom of the rationahst movement. They had appro- 
priated the benefits of it. They did not represent a violent 
reaction against it, but a natural and inevitable progress 
within and beyond it. This it was which gave to the Germans 
their leadership at the beginning of the nineteenth century 
in the sphere of the intellectual life. It is worthy of note 
that the great heroes of the intellectual hfe in Germany, in 
the period of which we speak, were most of them deeply 
interested in the problem of religion. The first man to bring 
to England the leaven of this new spirit, and therewith to 
transcend the old philosophical standpoint of Locke and 
Hume, was Coleridge with his Aids to Reflection, pubUshed 
in 1825. But even after this impulse of Coleridge the move- 
ment remained in England a sporadic and uncertain one. 
It had nothing of the volume and consecutiveness which 
belonged to it in Germany. 

Coleridge left among his Hterary remains a work published 
in 1840 under the title of Confessions of an Enquiring 
Spirit. What is here written is largely upon the basis of 
intuition and forecast Hke that of Reimarus and Lessing a 
half-century earlier in Germany. Strauss and others were 
already at work in Germany upon the problem of the New 
Testament, Vatke and Reuss upon that of the Old. This 
was a different kind of labour, and destined to have im- 
measurably greater significance. George Eliot's maiden 
hterary labour was the translation into English of Strauss' 
first edition. But the results of that criticism were only 
slowly appropriated by the English. The ostensible results 
were at first radical and subversive in the extreme. They 
were fiercely repudiated in Strauss' own country. Yet in 
the main there was acknowledgment of the correctness of the 
principle for which Strauss had stood. Hardly before the 
decade of the sixties was that method accepted in England 
in any wider way, and hardly before the decade of the seventies 
in America. Renan was the first to set forth, in 1863, the 
historical and critical problem in the new spirit, in a way that 
the wide public which read French understood. 



I.] INTRODUCTION 17 

When we come to speak of the scientific movement it is 
not easy to say where the leadership lay. Many Englishmen 
were in the first rank of investigators and accumulators of 
material. The first attempt at a systematisation of the 
results of the modern sciences was that of Auguste Comte in 
his Philosophie Positive. This philosophy, however, under 
its name of Positivism, exerted a far greater influence, both 
in Comte's time and subsequently, in England than it did in 
France. Herbert Spencer, after the middle of the decade of 
the sixties, essayed to do something of the sort which Comte 
had attempted. He had far greater advantages for the 
solution of the problem. Comte's foil in all of his discussions 
of religion was the Catholicism of the south of France. None 
the less, the religion which in his later years he created, bears 
striking resemblance to that which in his earlier years he had 
sought to destroy. Spencer's attitude toward religion was 
in his earlier work one of more pronounced antagonism or, 
at least, of more complete agnosticism than in later days he 
found requisite to the maintenance of his scientific freedom 
and conscientiousness. Both of these men represent the 
effort to construe the world, including man, from the point 
of view of the natural and also of the social sciences, and to 
define the place of religion in that view of the world which 
is thus set forth. The fact that there had been no such philo- 
sophical readjustment in Great Britain as in Germany, made 
the acceptance of the evolutionary theory of the universe, 
which more and more the sciences enforced, slower and more 
difficult. The period of resistance on the part of those 
interested in rehgion extended far into the decade of the 
seventies. 

A word may be added concerning America. The early 
settlers had been proud of their connection with the EngUsh 
universities. An extraordinary number of them, in Massa- 
chusetts at least, had been Cambridge men. Yet a tradition 
of learning was later developed, which was not without the 
traits of isolation natural in the circumstances. The resi- 
dence, for a time, even of a man like Berkeley in this country, 
altered that but little. The clergy remained in singular 

B 



18 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

degree the educated and highly influential class. The 
churches had developed, in consonance with their Puritan 
character, a theology and philosophy so portentous in their 
conclusions, that we can without difficulty understand the re- 
action which was brought about. Wesleyanism had modified 
it in some portions of the country, but intensified it in others. 
Deism apparently had had no great influence. When the 
rationahst movement of the old world began to make itself felt, 
it was at first largely through the influence of France. The 
religious hfe of the country at the beginning of the nineteenth 
century was at a low ebb. Men hke Belsham and Priestley 
were known as apostles of a freer spirit in the treatment of 
the problem of religion. Priestley came to Pennsylvania in 
his exile. In the large, however, one may say that the New 
England liberal movement, which came by and by to be 
called Unitarian, was as truly American as was the orthodoxy 
to which it was opposed. Channing reminds one often of 
Schleiermacher. There is no evidence that he had learned 
from Schleiermacher. The hberal movement by its very 
impetuosity gave a new lease of life to an orthodoxy which, 
without that antagonism, would sooner have waned. The 
great revivals, which were a benediction to the life of the 
country, were thought to have closer relation to the theology 
of those who participated in them than they had. The 
breach between the liberal and conservative tendencies of 
religious thought in this country came at a time when the 
philosophical reconstruction was already well under way in 
Europe. The debate continued until long after the biblical- 
critical movement was in progress. The controversy was 
conducted upon both sides in practically total ignorance of 
these facts. There are traces upon both sides of that insight 
which makes the mystic a discoverer in reUgion, before the 
logic known to him will sustain the conclusion which he draws. 
There will always be interest in the Uterature of a discussion 
conducted by reverent and, in their own way, learned and 
original men. Yet there is a pathos about the sturdy origin- 
ality of good men expended upon a problem which had been 
already solved. The men in either camp proceeded from 



I.J INTRODUCTION 19 

assumptions which are now impossible to the men of both. 
It was not until after the Civil War that American students 
of theology began in numbers to study in Germany. It is 
a much more recent thing that one may assume the immediate 
reading of foreign books, or boast of current contribution 
from American scholars to the labour of the world's thought 
upon these themes. 

We should make a great mistake if we supposed that the 
progress has been an unceasing forward movement. Quite 
the contrary, in every aspect of it the life of the early part 
of the nineteenth century presents the spectacle of a great 
reaction. The resurgence of old ideas and forces seems 
almost incredible. In the political world we are wont to 
attribute this fact to the disillusionment which the French 
Revolution had wrought, and the suffering which the Napo- 
leonic Empire had entailed. The reaction in the world of 
thought, and particularly of religious thought, was, moreover, 
as marked as that in the world of deeds. The Roman Church 
profited by this swing of the pendulum in the minds of men 
as much as did the absolute State. Almost the first act of 
Pius vn. after his return to Rome in 1814, was the revival 
of the Society of Jesus, which had been after long agony in 
1773 dissolved by the papacy itself. 'Altar and throne ' became 
the watchword of an ardent attempt at restoration of all of 
that which millions had given their lives to do away. All too 
easily, one who writes in sympathy with that which is con- 
ventionally called progress may give the impression that our 
period is one in which movement has been all in one direction. 
That is far from being true. One whose very ideal of pro- 
gress is that of movement in directions opposite to those we 
have described may well say that the nineteenth century 
has had its gifts for him as well. The life of mankind is too 
complex that one should write of it with one exclusive stan- 
dard as to loss and gain. And whatever be one's standard 
the facts cannot be ignored. 

The France of the thirties and the forties saw a liberal 
movement within the Roman Church. The names of Lamen- 
nais, of Lacordaire, of Montalembert and Ozanam, the title 



20 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch 

VAvenir occur to men's minds at once. Perhaps there has 
never been in France a party more truly CathoUc, more 
devout, refined and tolerant, more fitted to heal the breach 
between the cultivated and the Church. However, before 
the Second Empire, an end had been made of that. It 
cannot be said that the French Church exactly favoured 
the infalhbility. It certainly did not stand against the decree 
as in the old days it would have done. The decree of in- 
fallibility is itself the greatest witness of the steady progress 
of reaction in the Roman Church. That action, theoretically 
at least, does away with even that measure of popular con- 
stitution in the Church to which the end of the Middle Age 
had held fast without wavering, which the mightiest of popes 
had not been able to abolish and the Council of Trent had 
not dared earnestly to debate. Whether the decree of 1870 
is viewed in the light of the Syllabus of Errors of 1864, and 
again of the Encyclical of 1907, or whether the encycUcals are 
viewed in the light of the decree, the fact remains that a 
power has been given to the Curia against what has come to 
be called Modernism such as Innocent never wielded against 
the heresies of his day. Meantime, so hostile are exactly 
those peoples among whom Roman CathoUcism has had full 
sway, that it would almost appear that the hope of the Roman 
Church is in those countries in which, in the sequence of the 
Reformation, a religious tolerance obtains, which the Roman 
Church would have done everything in its power to prevent. 

Again, we should deceive ourselves if we supposed that 
the reaction had been felt only in Roman Cathohc lands. 
A minister of Prussia forbade Kant to speak concerning 
religion. The Prussia of Frederick WiUiam in. and of 
Frederick WilHam iv. was almost as reactionary as if Metter- 
nich had ruled in Berlin as well as in Vienna. The history 
of the censorship of the press and of the repression of free 
thought in Germany until the year 1848 is a sad chapter. 
The ruling influences in the Lutheran Church in that era, 
practically throughout Germany, were reactionary. The 
universities did indeed in large measure retain their ancient 
freedom . But the church in which Hengstenberg could be 



I.] INTRODUCTION 21 

a leader, and in which staunch seventeenth-century Lutheran- 
ism could be effectively sustained, was almost doomed to 
further that alienation between the life of piety and the life 
of learning which is so much to be deplored. In the Church 
the conservatives have to this moment largely triumphed. 
In the theological faculties of the universities the liberals 
in the main have held their own. The fact that both Church 
and faculties are functionaries of the State is often cited as 
sure in the end to bring about a solution of this unhappy 
state of things. For such a solution, it must be owned, we 
wait. 

The England of the period after 1815 had indeed no such 
cause for reaction as obtained in France or even in Germany. 
The nation having had its Revolution in the seventeenth cen- 
tury escaped that of the eighteenth. Still the country was 
exhausted in the conflict against Napoleon. Commercial, 
industrial and social problems agitated it. The Church 
slumbered. For a time the Uberal thought of England 
found utterance mainly through the poets. By the decade 
of the thirties movement had begun. The opinions of the 
Noetics in Oriel College, Oxford, now seem distinctly mild. 
They were sufficient to awaken Newman and Pusey, Froude, 
Keble, and the rest. Then followed the most significant 
ecclesiastical movement which the Church of England in the 
nineteenth century has seen, the Oxford or Tractarian move- 
ment, as it has been called. There was conscious recurrence 
of a mind like that of Newman to the Catholic position. He 
had never been able to conceive religion in any other terms 
than those of dogma, or the Christian assurance on any other 
basis than that of external authority. Nothing could be 
franker than the antagonism of the movement, from its in- 
ception, to the liberal spirit of the age. By inner logic 
Newman found himself at last in the Roman Church. Yet 
the Anglo-Catholic movement is to-day overwhelmingly in 
the ascendant in the English Church. The Broad Churchmen 
of the middle of the century have had few successors. It is 
the High Church which stands over against the great mass 
of the dissenting churches which, taken in the large, can 



22 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

hardly be said to be theologically more liberal than itself. 
It is the High Church which has showed Franciscanlike 
devotion in the problems of social readjustment which Eng- 
land to-day presents. It has shown in some part of its 
constituency a power of assimilation of new philosophical, 
critical and scientific views, which makes all comparison of 
it with the Roman Church misleading. And yet it remains in 
its own consciousness Cathohc to the core. 

In America also the vigour of onset of the hberalising 
forces at the beginning of the century tended to provoke 
reaction. The alarm with which the defection of so consider- 
able a portion of the Puritan Church was viewed gave coher- 
ence to the opposition. There were those who devoutly held 
that the hope of religion lay in its further liberalisation. 
Equally there were those who deeply felt that the deliverance 
lay in resistance to hberalisation. One of the concrete 
effects of the division of the churches was the separation of 
the education of the clergy from the universities, the entrust- 
ing it to isolated theological schools under denominational 
control. The system has done less harm than might have 
been expected. Yet at present there would appear to be 
a general movement of recurrence to the elder tradition. 
The maintenance of the reUgious life is to some extent a 
matter of nurture and observances, of religious habit and 
practice. This truth is one which liberals, in their emphasis 
upon Uberty and the individual, are always in danger of 
overlooking. The great revivals of religion in this century, 
like those of the century previous, have been connected with 
a form of religious thought pronouncedly pietistic. The 
building up of religious institutions in the new regions of the 
West, and the participation of the churches of the country 
in missions, wear predominantly this cast. Antecedently, 
one might have said that the lack of ecclesiastical cohesion 
among the Christians of the land, the ease with which a small 
group might spht off for the furtherance of its own particular 
view, would tend to liberalisation. It is doubtful whether 
this is true. Isolation is not necessarily a condition of pro- 
gress. The emphasis upon trivial differences becomes rather 



t) INTRODUCTION 23 

a condition of their permanence. The middle of the nine- 
teenth century in the United States was a period of intense 
denominationalism. That is synonymous with a period of 
the stagnation of Christian thought. The rehgion of a people 
absorbed in the practical is likely to be one which they at 
least suppose to be a practical religion. In one age the most 
practical thing will appear to men to be to escape hell, in 
another to further socialism. The need of adjustment of 
religion to the great intellectual life of the world comes with 
contact with that life. What strikes one in the survey of 
the religious thought of the country, by and large, for a 
century and a quarter, is not so much that it has been 
reactionary, as that it has been stationary. Almost every 
other aspect of the life of our country, including even that 
of religious life as distinguished from religious thought, has 
gone ahead by leaps and bounds. This it is which in a 
measure has created the tension which we feel. 



B. — The Background 

Deism 

In England before the end of the Civil War a movement 
for the rationalisation of religion had begun to make itself 
felt. It was in full force in the time of the Revolution of 
1688. It had not altogether spent itself by the middle of the 
eighteenth century. The movement has borne the name of 
Deism. In so far as it had one watchword, this came to be 
^ natural religion.' The antithesis had in mind was that to 
revealed religion, as this had been set forth in the tradition 
of the Church, and particularly under the bibliolatry of the 
Puritans. It is a witness to the liberty of speech enjoyed 
by Englishmen in that day and to their interest in religion, 
that such a movement could have arisen largely among 
laymen who were often men of rank. It is an honour to 
the English race that, in the period of the rising might of 
the rational spirit throughout the western world, men should 
have sought at once to utilise that force for the restatement 



24 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

of religion. Yet one may say quite simply that this under- 
taking of the deists was premature. The time was not ripe 
for the endeavour. The rationalist movement itself needed 
greater breadth and deeper understanding of itself. Above 
all, it needed the salutary correction of opposing principles 
before it could avail for this delicate and difficult task. Re- 
ligion is the most conservative of human interests. Rational- 
ism would be successful in establishing a new interpretation 
of religion only after it had been successful in many other 
fields. The arguments of the deists were never successfully 
refuted. On the contrary, the striking thing is that their 
opponents, the militant divines and writers of numberless 
volumes of ' Evidences for Christianity,' had come to the same 
rational basis with the deists. They referred even the most 
subtle questions to the pure reason, as no one now would do. 
The deistical movement was not really defeated. It largely 
compelled its opponents to adopt its methods. It left a 
deposit which is more nearly rated at its worth at the present 
than it was in its own time. But it ceased to command 
confidence, or even interest. Samuel Johnson said, as to 
the publication of Bolingbroke's work by his executor, three 
years after the author's death : ' It was a rusty old blunder- 
buss, which he need not have been afraid to discharge himself, 
instead of leaving a half-crown to a Scotchman to let it oflf 
after his death.' 

It is a great mistake, however, in describing the influence 
of rationalism upon Christian thought to deal mainly with 
deism. English deism made itself felt in France, as one may 
see in the case of Voltaire. Kant was at one time deeply 
moved by some English writers who would be assigned to 
this class. In a sense Kant showed traces of the deistical 
view to the last. The centre of the rationalistic movement 
had, however, long since passed from England to the 
Continent. The religious problem was no longer its central 
problem. We quite fail to appreciate what the nineteenth 
century owes to the eighteenth and to the rationalist move- 
ment in general, unless we view this latter in a far larger 
way. 



L] INTRODUCTION 26 

Rationalism 

In 1784 Kant wrote a tractate entitled, Was ist Auf- 
Icldrung ? He said : ' Aufklarung is the advance of man 
beyond the stage of voluntary immaturity. By immaturity 
is meant a man's inability to use his understanding except 
under the guidance of another. The immaturity is voluntary 
when the cause is not want of intelligence but of resolution. 
Sapere aude ! '' Dare to use thine own understanding," is 
therefore the motto of free thought. If it be asked, '' Do 
we live in a free- thinking age ? " the answer is, " No, but 
we live in an age of free thought." As things are at present, 
men in general are very far from possessing, or even from 
being able to acquire, the power of making a sure and right 
use of their own understanding without the guidance of others. 
On the other hand, we have clear indications that the field 
now lies, nevertheless, open before them, to which they can 
freely make their way and that the hindrances to general 
freedom of thought are gradually becoming less.' And again 
he says : ' If we wish to insure the true use of the under- 
standing by a method which is universally valid, we must 
first critically examine the laws which are involved in the very 
nature of the understanding itself. For the knowledge of a 
truth which is valid for everyone is possible only when based 
on laws which are involved in the nature of the human mind, 
as such, and have not been imported into it from without 
through facts of experience, which must always be accidental 
and conditional.' 

There speaks, of course, the prophet of the new age which 
was to transcend the old rationalist movement. Men had 
come to harp in complacency upon reason. They had 
never inquired into the nature and laws of action of the 
reason itself. Kant, though in fullest sympathy with its 
fundamental principles, was yet aware of the excesses and 
weaknesses in which the rationalist movement was running 
out. No man was ever more truly a child of rationalism. No 
man has ever written, to whom the human reason was more 
divine and inviolable. Yet no man ever had greater reserves 



26 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch, 

within himself which rationaUsm, as it had been, had never 
touched. It was he, therefore, who could lay the foundations 
for a new and nobler philosophy for the future. The word 
Aufkldrung, which the speech of the Fatherland furnished 
him, is a better word than ours. It is a better word than 
the French V Illuminisme, the EnUghtenment. Still we are 
apparently committed to the term Rationalism, although 
it is not an altogether fortunate designation which the 
English-speaking race has given to a tendency practically 
universal in the thinking of Europe, from about 1650 to 
the beginning of the nineteenth century. Historically, the 
^ rationalistic movement was the necessary preUminary for 
I the modern period of European civilisation, as distinguished 
from the ecclesiastically and theologically determined culture 
which had prevailed up to that time. It marks the great 
cleft between the ancient and mediaeval world of culture 
I on the one hand and the modern world on the other. The 
Reformation had but pushed ajar the door to the modern 
world and then seemed in surprise and fear about to close it 
again. The thread of the Renaissance was taken up again 
only in the Enlightenment. The stream flowed underground 
which was yet to fertilise the modern world. 

We are here mainly concerned to note the breadth and 
universality of the movement. It was a transformation of 
culture, a change in the principles underlying civilisation, 
in all departments of life. It had indeed, as one of its most 
general traits, the antagonism to ecclesiastical and theological 
authority. Whatever it was doing, it was never without a 
sidelong glance at religion. That was because the alleged 
divine right of churches and states was the one might which 
it seemed everywhere necessary to break. The conflict with 
ecclesiasticism, however, was taken up also by Pietism, the 
other great spiritual force of the age. This was in spite of 
the fact that the pietists' view of religion was the opposite 
of the rationalist view. Rationalism was characterised by 
thorough-going antagonism to supernaturalism with all its 
consequences. This arose from its zeal for the natural and 
the human, in a day when all men, defenders and assailants 



I.] INTRODUCTION 27 

of religion alike, accepted the dictum that what was human 
could not be divine, the divine must necessarily be the opposite 
of the human. In reality this general trait of opposition to 
religion deceives us. It is superficial. In large part the 
rationalists were willing to leave the question of religion on 
one side if the ecclesiastics would let them alone. This is 
true in spite of the fact that the pot-house rationalism of 
Germany and France in the eighteenth century found the 
main butt of its ridicule in the priesthood and the Church. 
On its sober side, in the studies of scholars, in the bureaux of 
statesmen, in the laboratories of discoverers, it found more 
solid work. It accomplished results which that other trivial 
aspect must not hide from us. 

Troeltsch first in our own day has given us a satisfactory 
account of the vast achievement of the movement in every 
department of human Hfe.^ It annihilated the theological 
notion of the State. In the period after the Thirty Years' 
War men began to question what had been the purpose of it 
all. Diplomacy freed itself from Jesuitical and papal notions. 
It turned preponderantly to commercial and economic aims. 
A secular view of the purpose of God in history began to 
prevail in all classes of society. The Grand Monarque was 
ready to proclaim the divine right of the State which was 
himself. Still, not until the period of his dotage did that 
claim bear any relation to what even he would have called 
religion. Publicists, both Catholic and Protestant, sought 
to recur to the lex naturce in contradistinction with the old 
lex divina. The natural rights of man, the rights of the people, 
the rationally conditioned rights of the State, a natural, 
prudential, utilitarian morality interested men. One of the 
consequences of this theory of the State was a complete 
alteration in the thought of the relation of State and Church. 
The nature of the Church itself as an empirical institution 
in the midst of human society was subjected to the same 
criticism with the State. Men saw the Church in a new light. 
As the State was viewed as a kind of contract in men's social 

1 Troeltsch, Art. *Aufklarung' in Herzog-Hauck. Realmcyclop&die^ 3 Aufl., 
Bd. ii., s. 225 f. 



28 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

interest, so the Church was regarded as but a voluntary 
association to care for their rehgious interests. It was to be 
judged according to the practical success with which it 
performed this function. 

Then also, in the economic and social field the rational spirit 
made itself felt. Commerce and the growth of colonies, the 
extension of the middle class, the redistribution of wealth, 
the growth of cities, the dependence in relations of trade of 
one nation upon another, all these things shook the ancient 
organisation of society. The industrial system grew up upon 
the basis of a naturalistic theory of all economic relations. 
Unlimited freedom in labour and in the use of capital were 
claimed. There came a great revolution in pubhc opinion 
upon all matters of morals. The ferocity of religious wars, 
the cruelty of religious persecutions, the bigotry and abusive- 
ness of religious controversies, the casuistry of the confessional, 
these all, which, only a generation earlier, had been taken 
by long-suffering humanity as if they had been matters of 
course, were now viewed with contrition by the more exalted 
spirits and with contempt and embitterment by the rest. 
Men said, if religion can give us no better morality than this, 
it is high time we looked to the natural basis of morality. 
Natural morahty came to be the phrase ever on the lips of 
the leading spirits. Too frequently they had come to look 
askance at the morahty of those who alleged a supernatural 
sanction for that which they at least enjoined upon others. 
We come in this field also, as in the others, upon the assertion 
of the human as nobler and more beautiful than that which 
had by the theologians been alleged to be divine. The 
assertion came indeed to be made in ribald and blasphemous 
forms, but it was not without a great measure of provocation. 

Then there was the altered view of nature which came 
through the scientific discoveries of the age. Bacon, Coper- 
nicus, Kepler, Galileo, Gassendi, Newton, are the fathers 
of the modern sciences. These are the men who brought 
new worlds to our knowledge and new methods to our use. 
That the sun does not move about the earth, that the earth 
is but a speck in space, that heaven cannot be above nor hell 



L] INTRODUCTION 29 

beneath, these are thoughts which have consequences. Instead 
of the old deductive method, that of the mediaeval Aristotel- 
ianism, which had been worse than fruitless in the study of 
nature, men now set out with a great enthusiasm to study facts, 
and to observe their laws. Modern optics, acoustics, chemistry, 
geology, zoology, psychology and medicine, took their rises 
within the period of which we speak. The influence was 
indescribable. Newton might maintain his own simple piety ) 
side by side, so to say, with his character, as a scientific (. 
man, though even he did not escape the accusation of being j 
a Unitarian. In the resistance which official religion offered 1 
at every step to the advance of the sciences, it is small wonder \ 
if natures less placid found the maintenance of their ancestral | 
faith too difficult. Natural science was deistic with Locke and j 
Voltaire, it was pantheistic in the antique sense with Shaftes- 
bury, it was pantheistic-mystical with Spinoza, spiritual- 
istic with Descartes, theistic with Leibnitz, materialistic with 
the men of the Encyclopaedia. It was orthodox with nobody. | 
The miracle as traditionally defined became impossible. ] 
At all events it became the millstone around the neck of the I 
apologists. The movement went to an extreme. All the 
evils of excess upon this side from which we since have suffered 
were forecast. They were in a measure called out by the 
evils and errors which had so long reigned upon the other side. 

Again, in the field of the writing of history and of the 
critique of ancient literatures, the principles of rational 
criticism were worked out and applied in all seriousness. 
Then these maxims began to be applied, sometimes timidly 
and sometimes in scorn and shallowness, to the sacred history 
and literature as well. To claim, as the defenders of the faith 
were fain to do, that this one department of history was 
exempt, was only to tempt historians to say that this was 
equivalent to confession that we have not here to do with 
history at all. 

Nor can we overlook the fact that the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries witnessed a great philosophical revival. 
Here again it is the rationalist principle which is everywhere 
at work. The observations upon nature, the new feeling 



30 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

concerning man, the vast complex of facts and impulses 
which we have been able in these few words to suggest, 
demanded a new philosophical treatment. The philosophy 
which now took its rise was no longer the servant of theology. 
It was, at most, the friend, and even possibly the enemy, of 
theology. Before the end of the rationalist period it was the 
master of theology, though often wholly indifferent to theo- 
logy, exactly because of its sense of mastery. The great 
philosophers of the eighteenth century, Hume, Berkeley, 
and Kant, belong with a part only of their work and 
tendency to the rationalist movement. Still their work 
rested upon that which had already been done by Spinoza 
and Malebranche, by Hobbes and Leibnitz, by Descartes and 
Bayle, by Locke and Wolff, by Voltaire and the Encyclo- 
paedists. With all of the contrasts among these men there 
are common elements. There is an ever-increasing antipathy 
to the thought of original sin and of supernatural revelation, 
there is the confidence of human reason, the trust in the will 
of man, the enthusiasm for the simple, the natural, the in- 
telligible and practical, the hatred of what was scholastic 
and, above all, the repudiation of authority. 

All these elements led, toward the end of the period, to 
the effort at the construction of a really rational theology. 
Leibnitz and Lessing both worked at that problem. How- 
ever, not until after the labours of Kant was it possible to 
utilise the results of the rationalist movement for the recon- 
struction of theology. If evidence for this statement were 
wanting, it could be abundantly given from the work of 
Herder. He was younger than Kant, yet the latter seems 
to have exerted but slight influence upon him. He earnestly 
desired to reinterpret Christianity in the new light of his time, 
yet perhaps no part of his work is so futile. 

Pietism 

Allusion has been made to pietism. We have no need to 
set forth its own achievements. We must recur to it merely 
as one of the influences which made the transition from the 



I.] INTRODUCTION 31 

century of rationalism to bear, in Germany, an aspect different 
from that which it bore in any other land. Pietism had at 
first much in common with rationalism. It shared with the 
latter its opposition to the whole administration of religion 
established by the State, its antagonism to the social dis- 
tinctions which prevailed, its individualism, its emphasis upon 
the practical. It was part of a general religious reaction 
against ecclesiasticism, as were also Jansenism in France, 
and Methodism in England, and the Whitefieldian revival in 
America. But, through the character of Spener, and through 
the peculiarity of German social relations, it gained an in- 
fluence over the educated classes, such as Methodism never 
had in England, nor, on the whole, the Great Awakening 
in America. In virtue of this, German pietism was able, 
among influential persons, to present victorious opposition 
to the merely secular tendencies of the rationalistic move- 
ment. In no small measure it breathed into that movement 
a religious quality which in other lands was utterly lacking. 
It gave to it an ethical seriousness from which in other 
places it had too often set itself free. 

In England there had followed upon the age of the great 
religious conflict one of astounding ebb of spiritual interest. 
Men turned with all energy to the political and economic 
interests of a wholly modern civilisation. They retained, 
after a short period of friction, a smug and latitudinarian 
orthodoxy, which Methodism did little to change. In France 
not only was the Huguenot Church annihilated, but the 
Jansenist movement was savagely suppressed. The tyranny 
of the Bourbon State and the corruption of the Gallican 
Church which was so deeply identified with it caused the 
rationalist movement to bear the trait of a passionate oppo- 
sition to religion. In the time of Pascal, Jansenism had 
a moment when it bade fair to be to France what pietism 
was to Germany. Later, in the anguish and isolation of 
the conflict the movement lost its poise and intellectual 
quahty. In Germany, even after the temporary alliance 
of pietism and rationalism against the Church had been 
transcended, and the length and breadth of their mutual 
/ 



32 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

antagonism had been revealed, there remained a deep mutual 
respect and salutary interaction. Obscurantists and senti- 
mentalists might denounce rationalism. Vulgar ranters hke 
Dippel and Earth might defame religion. That had little 
weight as compared with the fact that Klopstock, Hamann 
and Herder, Jacobi, Goethe and Jean Paul, had all passed 
at some time under the influence of pietism. Lessing 
learned from the Moravians the undogmatic essence of re- 
ligion. Schleiermacher was bred among the devoted followers 
of Zinzendorf. Even the radicalism of Kant retained from 
the teaching of his pietistic youth the stringency of its ethic, 
the sense of the radical evil of human nature and of the 
categorical imperative of duty. It would be hard to find 
anything to surpass his testimony to the purity of character 
and spirit of his parents, or the beauty of the home life in 
which he was bred. Such facts as these made themselves felt 
both in the philosophy and in the poetry of the age. The 
rationahst movement itself came to have an ethical and 
spiritual trait. The triviality, the morbidness and super- 
stition of pietism received their just condemnation. But 
among the leaders of the nation in every walk of hfe were 
some who felt the drawing to deal with ethical and religious 
problems in the untrammelled fashion which the century 
had taught. 

We may be permitted to try to show the meaning of pietism 
by a concrete example. No one can read the correspondence 
between the youthful Schleiermacher and his loving but 
mistaken father, or again, the hfelong correspondence of 
Schleiermacher with his sister, without receiving, if he has any 
religion of his own, a touching impression of what the pietistic 
rehgion meant. The father had long before, unknown to 
the son, passed through the torments of the rational assault 
upon a faith which was sacred to him. He had preached, 
through years, in the misery of contradiction with himself. 
He had rescued his drowning soul in the ark of the most 
intolerant confessional orthodoxy. In the crisis of his son's 
life he pitiably concealed these facts. They should have 
been the bond of sympathy. The son, a sorrowful Httle 



L INTRODUCTION 33 

motherless boy, was sent to the Moravian school at Niesky, 
and then to Barby. He was to escape the contamination 
of the universities, and the woes through which his father had 
passed. Even there the spirit of the age pursued him. The 
precocious lad, in his lonehness, raised every question which 
the race was wrestling with. He long concealed these facts, 
dreading to wound the man he so revered. Then in a burst 
of filial candour, he threw himself upon his father's mercy, 
only to be abused and measurelessly condemned. He had 
his way. He resorted to Halle, turned his back on sacred 
things, worked in titanic fashion at everything but the pro- 
blem of religion. At least he kept his life clean and his soul 
sensitive among the flagrantly immoral who were all about 
him, even in the pietists' own university. He laid the foun- 
dations for his future philosophical construction. He bathed 
in the sentiments and sympathies, poetic, artistic and humani- 
tarian, of the romanticist movement. In his early Berlin 
period he was almost swept from his feet by its flood. He 
rescued himself, however, by his rationalism and romanticism 
into a breadth and power of faith which made him the 
prophet of the new age. By him, for a generation, men 
like-minded saved their souls. As one reads, one realises that 
it was the pietists' religion which saved him, and which, in 
another sense, he saved. His recollections of his instruction 
among the Herrnhuter are full of beauty and pathos. His 
sister never advanced a step upon the long road which he 
travelled. Yet his sympathy with her remained unimpaired. 
The two poles of the life of the age are visible here. The 
episode, full of exquisite personal charm, is a veritable 
miniature of the first fifty years of the movement which 
we have to record. No one did for England or for France 
what Schleiermacher had done for the Fatherland. 



Msthetic Idealism 

Besides pietism, the Germany of the end of the eighteenth 
century possessed still another foil and counterpoise to its 
decadent rationalism. This was the so-called sesthetic- 

c 



34 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

idealistic movement, which shades off into romanticism. 
The debt of Schleiermacher to that movement has been 
already hinted at. It was the revolt of those who had this 
in common with the pietists, that they hated and despised 
the outworn rationalism. They thought they wanted no 
religion. It is open to us to say that they misunderstood 
religion. It was this misunderstanding which Schleier- 
macher sought to bring home to them. What reUgion 
they understood, ecclesiasticism, Roman or Lutheran, 
or again, the banalities and fanaticisms of middle-class 
pietism, they despised. Their war with rationalism was 
not because it had deprived men of religion. It had been 
equally destructive of another side of the life of feeling, the 
aesthetic. Their war was not on behalf of the good, it was in 
the name of the beautiful. Rationalism had starved the soul, 
it had minimised and derided feeling. It had suppressed 
emotion. It had been fatal to art. It was barren of poetry. 
It had had no sympathy with history and no understanding 
of history. It had reduced everything to the process by 
which two and two make four. The pietists said that the 
frenzy for reason had made men oblivious of the element of 
the divine. The aesthetic idealists said that it had been fatal 
to the element of the human. From this point of view their 
movement has been called the new humanism. The glamour 
of life was gone, they said. Mystery had vanished. And 
mystery is the womb of every art. Rationalism had been 
absolutely uncreative, only and always destructive. Rous- 
seau had earlier uttered this wail in France, and had greatly 
influenced certain minds in Germany. Shelley and Keats 
were saying something of the sort in England. Even as to 
Wordsworth, it may be an open question if his religion was not 
mainly romanticism. All these men used language which had 
been conventionally associated with religion, to describe this 
other emotion. 

Rationalism had ended in proving deadly to ideals. This 
was true. But men forgot for the moment how glorious an 
ideal it had once been to be rational and to assert the 
rationality of the universe. Still the time had come when, 



I.] INTRODUCTION 35 

in Germany at all events, the great cry was, * back to the 
ideal.' It is curious that men always cry ' back ' when they 
mean ' forward.' For it was not the old idealism, either 
religious or aesthetic, which they were seeking. It was a new 
one in which the sober fruits of rationalism should find place. 
Still, for the moment, as we have seen, the air was full of the 
cry, ' back to the State by divine right, back to the Church, 
back to the Middle Age, back to the beauty of classical anti- 
quity.' The poetry, the romance, the artistic criticism of 
this movement set themselves free at a stroke from theo- 
logical bondage and from the externality of conventional 
ethics. It shook oflE the dust of the doctrinaires. It ridi- 
culed the petty utilitarianism which had been the vogue. 
It had such an horizon as men had never dreamed before. 
It owed that horizon to the rationalism it despised. From 
its new elevation it surveyed all the great elements of the 
life of man. It saw morals and religion, language and society, 
along with art and itself, as the free and unconscious product 
through the ages, of the vitality of the human spirit. It 
must be said that it neither solved nor put away the ancient 
questions. Especially through its one-sided aestheticism it 
veiled that element of dualism in the world which Kant 
clearly saw, and we now see again, after a century which 
has sometimes leaned to easy pantheism. However, it led 
to a study of the human soul and of all its activities, which 
came closer to living nature than anything which the world 
had yet seen. 

To this group of aesthetic idealists belong, not to mention 
lesser names, Lessing and Hamann and Winckelmann, but 
above all Herder and Goethe. Herder was surely the finest 
spirit among the elder contemporaries of Goethe. Bitterly 
hostile to the rationalists, he had been moved by Rousseau 
to enthusiasm for the free creative life of the human spirit. 
With Lessing he felt the worth of every art in and for itself, and 
the greatness of life in its own fulfilment. He sets out from 
the analysis of the poetic and artistic powers, the appreciation 
of which seemed to him to be the key to the understanding 
of the spiritual world. Then first he approaches the analysis 



36 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [CH. 

of the ethical and reUgious feeling. All the knowledge and 
insight thus gained he gathers together into a history of the 
spiritual hfe of mankind. This life of the human spirit comes 
forth everywhere from nature, is bound to nature. It con- 
stitutes one whole with a nature which the devout soul calls 
God, and apprehends within itself as the secret of all that 
it is and does. Even in the period in which he had become 
passionately Christian, Herder never was able to attain to a 
scientific establishing of his Christianity, or to any sense 
of the specific aim of its development. He felt himself to be 
separated from Kant by an impassable gulf. All the sharp 
antinomies among which Kant moved, contrasts of that which 
is sensuous with that which is reasonable, of experience with 
pure conception, of substance and form in thought, of nature 
and freedom, of inclination and duty, seemed to Herder 
grossly exaggerated, if not absolutely false. Sometimes 
Herder speaks as if the end of life were simply the happiness 
which a man gets out of the use of all his powers and out of 
the mere fact of existence. Deeper is Kant's contention, that 
the true aim of hfe can be only moral culture, even inde- 
pendent of happiness, or rather one must find his noblest 
happiness in that moral culture. 

At a period in his life when Herder had undergone con- 
version to court orthodoxy at Biickeburg and threatened 
to throw away that for which his life had stood, he was 
greatly helped by Goethe. The identification of Herder with 
Christianity continued to be more deep and direct than that 
of Goethe ever became. Yet Goethe has also his measure of 
significance for our theme. If he steadied Herder in his 
religious experience, he steadied others in their poetical 
emotionahsm and artistic sentimentality, which were fast 
becoming vices of the time. The classic repose of his spirit, 
his apparently unconscious illustration of the ancient maxim, 
' nothing too much,' was the more remarkable, because there 
were few infiuences in the whole gamut of human hfe to which 
he did not sooner or later surrender himself, few experiences 
which he did not seek, few areas of thought upon which he 
did not enter. Systems and theories were never much to his 



I.] INTRODUCTION 37 

mind. A fact, even if it were inexplicable, interested him 
much more. To the evolution of formal thought in his 
age he held himself receptive rather than directing. He 
kept, to the last, his own manner of brooding and creating, 
within the limits of a poetic impressionableness which in- 
stinctively viewed the material world and the life of the soul 
in substantially similar fashion. There is something almost 
humorous in the way in which he eagerly appropriated the 
results of the philosophising of his time, in so far as he 
could use these to sustain his own positions, and caustically 
rejected those which he could not thus use. He soon got by 
heart the negative lessons of Voltaire and found, to use the 
words which he puts into the mouth of Faust, that while it 
freed him from his superstitions, at the same time it made 
the world empty and dismal beyond endurance. In the 
mechanical philosophy which presented itself in the Systime 
de la Nature as a positive substitute for his lost faith, he 
found only that which filled his poet's soul with horror. 
' It appeared to us,' he says, ' so grey, so Cimmerian and so 
dead that we shuddered at it as at a ghost. We thought 
it the very quintessence of old age. All was said to be 
necessary, and therefore there was no God. Why not a 
necessity for a God to take its place among the other neces- 
sities ! ' On the other hand, the ordinary teleological theology, 
with its external architect of the world and its externally 
determined designs, could not seem to Goethe more satis- 
factory than the mechanical philosophy. He joined for a 
time in Rousseau's cry for the return to nature. But Goethe 
was far too well balanced not to perceive that such a cry- 
may be the expression of a very artificial and sophisticated 
state of mind. It begins indeed in the desire to throw off that 
which is really oppressive. It ends in a fretful and reckless 
revolt against the most necessary conditions of human life. 
Goethe lived long enough to see in France that dissolution 
of all authority, whether of State or Church, for which Rous- 
seau had pined. He saw it result in the return of a portion 
of mankind to what we now believe to have been their primi- 
tive state, a state in which they were ' red in tooth and claw.' 



38 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

It was not that paradisaic state of love and innocence, which, 
curiously enough, both Rousseau and the theologians seem 
to have imagined was the primitive state. 

The thought of the discipline and renunciation of our lower 
nature in order to the realisation of a higher nature of man- 
kind is written upon the very face of the second part of 
Faust, Certain passages in Dichtung und Wahrheit are even 
more famiUar. ' Our physical as well as our social Ufe, 
morahty, custom, knowledge of the world, philosophy, re- 
Ugion, even many an accidental occurrence in our daily hfe, 
all tell us that we must renounce.' ' Renunciation, once for 
all, in view of the eternal,' that was the lesson which he said 
made him feel an atmosphere of peace breathed upon him. 
He perceived the supreme moral significance of certain 
Christian ideas, especially that of the atonement as he 
interpreted it. ' It is altogether strange to me,' he writes 
to Jacobi, ' that I, an old heathen, should see the cross 
planted in my own garden, and hear Christ's blood preached 
without its offending me.' 

Goethe's quarrel with Christianity was due to two causes. 
In the first place, it was due to his viewing Christianity as 
mainly, if not exclusively, a religion of the other world, as it 
has been called, a religion whose God is not the principle of all 
life and nature and for which nature and life are not divine. 
In the second place, it was due to the prominence of the 
negative or ascetic element in Christianity as commonly 
presented, to the fact that in that presentation the law of 
self-sacrifice bore no relation to the law of self-realisation. In 
both of these respects he would have found himself much 
more at home with the apprehension of Christianity which 
we have inherited from the nineteenth century. The pro- 
gramme of charity which he outlines in the Wanderjahre 
as a substitute for religion would be taken to-day, so far as 
it goes, as a rather moderate expression of the very spirit of 
the Christian religion. 



nj IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY 



CHAPTER II 

IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY 

The causes which we have named, rehgious and aesthetic, 
as well as purely speculative, led to such a revision of 
philosophical principles in Germany as took place in no 
other land. The new idealistic philosophy, as it took shape 
primarily at the hands of Kant, completed the dissolution of 
the old rationalism. It laid the foundation for the specu- 
lative thought of the western world for the century which 
was to come. The answers which aestheticism and pietism 
gave to rationalism were incomplete. They consisted largely 
in calling attention to that which rationalism had overlooked. 
Kant's idealism, however, met the intellectual movement on 
its own grounds. It triumphed over it with its own weapons. 
The others set feeling over against thought. He taught men 
a new method in thinking. The others put emotion over 
against reason. He criticised in drastic fashion the use which 
had been made of reason. He inquired into the nature of 
reason. He vindicated the reasonableness of some truths 
which men had indeed felt to be indefeasibly true, but which 
they had not been able to establish by reasoning. 

Kant 

Immanuel Kant was born in 1724 in Konigsberg, possibly of 
remoter Scottish ancestry. His father was a saddler, as 
Melanchthon's had been an armourer and Wolff's a tanner. 
His native city with its university was the scene of his whole 
life and labour. He was never outside of Prussia except for 
a brief interval when Konigsberg belonged to Russia. He 



40 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch; 

was a German professor of the old style. Studying, teaching, 
writing books, these were his whole existence. He was the 
fourth of nine children of a devoted pietist household. Two 
of his sisters served in the houses of friends. The consis- 
torial-rath opened the way to the university. An uncle aided 
him to publish his first books. His earlier interest was in 
the natural sciences. He was slow in coming to promotion. 
Only after 1770 was he full professor of logic and metaphysics. 
In 1781 he published the first of the books upon which rests 
his world-wide fame. Nevertheless, he Hved to see the 
triumph of his philosophy in most of the German univer- 
sities. His subjects are abstruse, his style involved. It 
never occurred to him to make the treatment of his themes 
easier by use of the imagination. He had but a modicum 
of that quality. He was hostile to the pride of intellect 
often manifested by petty rationalists. He was almost 
equally hostile to excessive enthusiasm in religion. The 
note of his Ufe, apart from his intellectual power, was his 
ethical seriousness. He was in confiict with ecclesiastical 
personages and out of sympathy with much of institutional 
religion. None the less, he was in his own way one of the 
most rehgious of men. His brief conflict with Wollner's 
government was the only instance in which his peace and 
public honour were disturbed. He never married. He died 
in Konigsberg in 1804. He had been for ten years so much 
enfeebled that his death was a merciful release. 

Kant used the word * critique ' so often that his philosophy 
has been called the ' critical philosophy.' The word therefore 
needs an explanation. Kant himself distinguished two types 
of philosophy, which he called the dogmatic and critical types. 
The essence of a dogmatic philosophy is that it makes belief 
to rest upon knowledge. Its endeavour is to demonstrate 
that which is believed. It brings out as its foil the charac- 
teristically sceptical philosophy. This esteems that the proofs 
advanced in the interest of behef are inadequate. The 
behef itself is therefore an illusion. The essence of a critical 
philosophy, on the other hand, consists in this, that it makes 
a distinction between the functions of knowing and believing. 



n.] IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY 41 

It distinguishes between the perception of that which is in 
accordance with natural law and the understanding of the 
moral meaning of things.^ Kant thus uses his word critique 
in accordance with the strict etymological meaning of the 
root. He seeks to make a clear separation between the 
provinces of belief and knowledge, and thus to find an adjust- 
ment of their claims. Of an object of belief we may indeed 
say that we know it. Yet we must make clear to ourselves 
that we know it in a different sense from that in which we 
know physical fact. Faith, since it does not spring from 
the pure reason, cannot indeed, as the old dogmatisms, both 
philosophical and theological, have united in asserting, be 
demonstrated by the reason. Equally it cannot, as scepticism 
has declared, be overthrown by the pure reason. 

The ancient positive dogmatism had been the idealistic 
philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. The old negative dog- 
matism had been the materialism of the Epicureans. To 
Plato the world was the realisation of ideas. Ideas, spiritual 
entities, were the counterparts and necessary antecedents 
of the natural objects and actual facts of life. To the Epi- 
cureans, on the other hand, there are only material bodies 
and natural laws. There are no ideas or purposes. In the 
footsteps of the former moved all the scholastics of the Middle 
Age, and again, even Locke and Leibnitz in their so-called 
'natural theology.' In the footsteps of the latter moved 
the men who had made materialism and scepticism to be 
the dominant philosophy of France in the latter half of the 
eighteenth century. The aim of Kant was to resolve this 
age-long contradiction. Free, unprejudiced investigation of 
the facts and laws of the phenomenal world can never 
touch the foundations of faith. Natural science can lead 
to the knowledge only of the realm of the laws of things. 
It cannot give us the inner moral sense of those things. 
To speak of the purposes of nature as men had done was 
absurd. Natural theology, as men had talked of it, was 
impossible. What science can give is a knowledge of the 
facts about us in the world, of the growth of the cosmos, of 

1 PaulseD, Kanty s. 2, 



42 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

the development of life, of the course of history, all viewed 
as necessary sequences of cause and effect. 

On the other hand, with the idealists, Kant is fully per- 
suaded that there is a meaning in things and that we can 
know it. There is a sense in life. With immediate certainty 
we set moral good as the absolute aim in life. This is done, 
however, not through the pure reason or by scientific think- 
ing, but primarily through the will, or as Kant prefers to 
call it, the practical reason. What he means by the practical 
reason is the intelligence, the will and the affections operating 
together ; that is to say, the whole man, and not merely 
his intellect, directed to those problems upon which, in sym- 
pathy and moral reaction, the whole man must be directed 
and upon which the pure reason, the mere faculty of ratio- 
cination, does not adequately operate. In the practical 
reason the will is the central thing. The will is that faculty 
of man to which moral magnitudes appeal. It is with moral 
magnitudes that the will is primarily concerned. The pure 
reason may operate without the will and the affections. 
The will, as a source of knowledge, never works without the 
intelligence and the affections. But it is the will which alone 
judges according to the predicates good and evil. The pure 
reason judges according to the predicates true and false. It 
is the practical reason which ventures the credence that 
moral worth is the supreme worth in life. It then confirms 
this ventured credence in a manifold experience that yields a 
certainty with which no certainty of objects given in the 
senses is for a moment to be compared. We know that which 
we have believed. We know it as well as that two and two 
make four. Still we do not know it in the same way. Nor 
can we bring knowledge of it to others save through an act 
of freedom on their part, which is parallel to the original act 
of freedom on our own part. 

How can these two modes of thought stand related the 
one to the other ? Kant's answer is that they correspond to 
the distinction between two worlds, the world of sense and 
the transcendental or supersensible world. The pure and the 
practical reason are the faculties of man for dealing with 



n.] IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY 43 

these two worlds respectively, the phenomenal and the 
noumenal. The world which is the object of scientific in- 
vestigation is not the actuality itself. This is true in spite 
of the fact that to the common man the material and sensible 
( is always, as he would say, the real. On the contrary, in 
\ Kant's opinion the material world is only the presentation 
■ to our senses of something deeper, of which our senses are no 
; judge. The reality lies behind this sensible presentation i/ 
and appearance. The world of religious belief is the world 
of this transcendent reality. The spirit of man, which is 
not pure reason only, but moral will as well, recognises itself 
also as part of this reality. It expresses the essence of that 
mysterious reality in terms of its own essence. Its own 
essence as free spirit is the highest aspect of reality of which 
it is aware. It may be unconscious of the symbolic nature 
of its language in describing that which is higher than any- 
thing which we know, by the highest which we do know. Yet, 
granting that, and supposing that it is not a contradiction to 
attempt a description of the transcendent at all, there is no 
description which carries us so far. 

This series of ideas was perhaps that which gave to Kant's 
philosophy its immediate and immense effect upon the minds 
of men wearied with the endless strife and insoluble contra- 
diction of the dogmatic and sceptical spirits. We may 
disagree with much else in the Kantian system. Even here 
we may say that we have not two reasons, but only two 
t functionings of one. We have not two worlds. The philo- 
sophical myth of two worlds has no better standing than 
the religious myth of two worlds. We have two character- 
istic aspects of one and the same world. These perfectly 
interpenetrate the one the other, if we may help ourselves 
with the language of space. Each is everywhere present. 
Furthermore, these actions of reason and aspects of world 
shade into one another by imperceptible degrees. Almost 
all functionings of reason have something of the qualities 
of both. However, when all is said, it was of greatest worth 
to have had these two opposite poles of thought brought 
clearly to mind. The dogmatists, in the interest of faith, 



44 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ca 

were resisting at every step the progress of the sciences, 
feeling that that progress was inimical to faith. The de- 
votees of science were saying that its processes were of 
universal validity, its conclusions irresistible, the gradual 
dissolution of faith was certain. Kant made plain that 
neither party had the right to such conclusions. Each was 
attempting to apply the processes appropriate to one form 
of rational activity within the sphere which belonged to the 
other. Nothing but confusion could result. The religious 
man has no reason to be jealous of the advance of the sciences. 
The interests of faith itself are furthered by such investigation. 
Illusions as to fact which have been mistakenly identified 
with faith are thus done away. Nevertheless, its own eternal 
right is assured to faith. With it Hes the interpretation of 
the facts of nature and of history, whatsoever these facts 
may be found to be. With the practical reason is the inter- 
pretation of these facts according to their moral worth, a 
worth of which the pure reason knows nothing and scientific 
investigation reveals nothing. 

Here was a deUverance not unhke that which the Refor- 
mation had brought. The mingling of Aristotelianism and 
religion in the scholastic theology Luther had assailed. 
Instead of assent to human dogmas Luther had the imme- 
diate assurance of the heart that God was on his side. And 
what is that but a judgment of the practical reason, the 
response of the heart in man to the spiritual universe ? It 
is given in experience. It is not mediated by argument. It 
cannot be destroyed by syllogism. It needs no confir- 
mation from science. It is capable of combination with any 
of the changing interpretations which science may put upon 
the outward universe. The Reformation had, however, not 
held fast to its great truth. It had gone back to the old 
scholastic position. It had rested faith in an essentially 
rationaUstic manner upon supposed facts in nature and 
alleged events of history in connection with the revelation. 
It had thus jeopardised the whole content of faith, should 
these supposed facts of nature or events in history be at any 
time disproved. Men had made faith to rest upon statements 



II.] IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY 45 

of Scripture, alleging such and such facts and events. They 
did not recognise these as the naive and childlike assumptions 
concerning nature and history which the authors of Scripture 
would naturally have. When, therefore, these statements 
began with the progress of the sciences to be disproved, the 
defenders of the faith presented always the feeble spectacle of 
being driven from one form of evidence to another, as the old 
were in turn destroyed. The assumption was rife at the end 
of the eighteenth century that Christianity was discredited 
in the minds of all free and reasonable men. Its tenets 
were incompatible with that which enlightened men infallibly 
knew to be true. It could be no long time until the hoUow- 
ness and sham would be patent to all. Even the interested 
and the ignorant would be compelled to give it up. Of 
course, the invincibly devout in every nation felt of instinct 
that this was not true. They felt that there is an inexpug- 
nable truth of religion. Still that was merely an intuition of 
their hearts. They were right. But they were unable to 
prove that they were right, or even to get a hearing with 
many of the cultivated of their age. To Kant we owe the 
debt, that he put an end to this state of things. He made 
the real evidence for religion that of the moral sense, of the 
conscience and hearts of men themselves. The real ground 
of religious conviction is the religious experience. He thus 
set free both science and religion from an embarrassment 
under which both laboured, and by which both had been 
injured. 

Kant parted company with the empirical philosophy which 
had held that all knowledge arises from without, comes from 
experienced sensations, is essentially perception. This theory 
had not been able to explain the fact that human experience 
always conforms to certain laws. On the other hand, the 
philosophy of so-called innate ideas had sought to derive all 
knowledge from the constitution of the mind itself. It left 
out of consideration the dependence of the mind upon ex- 
perience. It tended to confound the creations of its own 
speculation with reality, or rather, to claim correspondence 
with fact for statements which had no warrant in experience. 



46 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

There was no limit to which this speculative process might 
not be pushed. By this process the mediaeval theologians, 
with all gravity, propounded the most absurd speculations 
concerning nature. By this process men made the most 
astonishing declarations upon the basis, as they supposed, of 
revelation. They made allegations concerning history and 
the religious experience which the most rudimentary know- 
ledge of history or reflection upon consciousness proved to 
be quite contrary to fact. 

Both empiricism and the theory of innate ideas had agreed 
in regarding all knowledge as something given, from without 
or from within. The knowing mind was only a passive 
recipient of impressions thus imparted to it. It was as wax 
j under the stylus, tabula rasa, clean paper waiting to be 
written upon. Kant departed from this radically. He 
declared that all cognition rests upon the union of the mind's 
activity with its receptivity. The material of thought, or 
at least some of the materials of thought, must be given 
us in the multiformity of our perceptions, through what we 
call experience from the outer world. On the other hand, the 
formation of this material into knowledge is the work of the 
/activity of our own minds. KLnowledge is the result of the 
I systematising of experience and of reflection upon it. This 
activity of the mind takes place always in accordance with 
the mind's own laws. Kant held thus to the absolute de- 
pendence of knowledge upon material supplied in experience. 
He compared himself to Copernicus who had taught men 
that they themselves revolved about a central fact of the 
universe. They had supposed that the facts revolved about 
them. The central fact of the intellectual world is ex- 
perience. This experience seems to be given us in the forms 
of time and space and cause. These are merely forms of the 
mind's own activity. It is not possible for us to know * the 
thing in itself,' the Ding-an-sich in Kant's phrase, which 
is the external factor in any sensation or perception. We 
cannot distinguish that external factor from the contribution 
to it, as it stands in our perception, which our own minds 
have made. If we cannot do that even for ourselves, how 



n.] IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY 47 

much less can we do it for others ! It is the subject, the 
thinking being who says ' I,' which, by means of its charac- 
teristic and necessary active processes, in the perception of 
things under the forms of time and space, converts the chaotic 
material of knowledge into a regular and ordered world of 
reasoned experience. In this sense the understanding itself 
imposes laws, if not upon nature, yet, at least, upon nature 
as we can ever know it. There is thus in Kant's philosophy 
a sceptical aspect. Knowledge is limited to phenomena. 
We cannot by pure reason know anything of the world which 
lies beyond experience. This thought had been put forth 
by Locke and Berkeley, and by Hume also, in a different way. 
But with Kant this scepticism was not the gist of his philo- 
sophy. It was urged rather as the basis of the unconditioned 
character which he proposed to assert for the practical 
reason. Kant's scepticism is therefore very different from 
that of Hume. It does not militate against the profoundest 
religious conviction. Yet it prepared the way for some of 
the just claims of modern agnosticism. 

According to Kant, it is as much the province of the prac- 
tical reason to lay down laws for action as it is the province 
of pure reason to determine the conditions of thought, though 
the practical reason can define only the form of action which 
shall be in the spirit of duty. It cannot present duty to us 
as an object of desire. Desire can be only a form of self-love. 
In the end it reckons with the advantage of having done one's 
duty. It thus becomes selfish and degraded. The identi- 
fication of duty and interest was particularly offensive to 
.Kant. He was at war with every form of hedonism. To do 
one's duty because one expects to reap advantage is not to 
have done one's duty. The doing of duty in this spirit simply 
resolves itself into a subtler and more pervasive form of 
selfishness. He castigates the popular presentation of religion 
as fostering this same fault. On the other hand, there is a 
trait of rigorism in Kant, a survival of the ancient dualism, 
which was not altogether consistent with the implications of 
his own philosophy. This philosophy afforded, as we have 
seen, the basis for a monistic view of the universe. But to 



48 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

his mind the natural inclinations of man are opposed to good 
conscience and sound reason. He had contempt for the 
shallow optimism of his time, according to which the nature 
of man was all good, and needed only to be allowed to run its 
natural course to produce highest ethical results. He does 
not seem to have penetrated to the root of Rousseau's fallacy, 
the double sense in which he constantly used the words 'nature' 
and ' natural.' Otherwise, Kant would have been able to re- 
pudiate the preposterous doctrine of Rousseau, without him- 
self falling back upon the doctrine of the radical evil of human 
nature. In this doctrine he is practically at one with the 
popular teaching of his own pietistic background, and with 
Calvinism as it prevailed with many of the religiously-minded 
of his day. In its extreme statements this latter reminds one 
of the pagan and oriental dualisms which so long ran parallel 
to the development of Christian thought and so profoundly 
influenced it. 

Kant's system is not at one with itself at this point. 
According to him the natural inclinations of men are such as 
to produce a never-ending struggle between duty and desire. 
To desire to do a thing made him suspicious that he was not 
actuated by the pure spirit of duty in doing it. The sense in 
which man may be in his nature both a child of God, and, at 
the same time, part of the great complex of nature, was not 
yet clear either to Kant or to his opponents. His pessimism 
was a reflection of his moral seriousness. Yet it failed to 
reckon with that which is yet a glorious fact. One of the 
chief results of doing one's duty is the gradual escape from 
the desire to do the contrary. It is the gradual fostering by 
us, the ultimate dominance in us, of the desire to do that 
duty. Even to have seen one's duty is the dawning in us of 
this high desire. In the lowest man there is indeed the super- 
ficial desire to indulge his passions. There is also the latent 
longing to be conformed to the good. There is the sense 
that he fulfils himself then only when he is obedient to the 
good. One of the great facts of spiritual experience is this 
gradual, or even sudden, inversion of standard within us. 
We do really cease to desire the things which are against 



n.] IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY 49 

right reason and conscience. We come to desire the good, 
even if it shall cost us pain and sacrifice to do it. Paul could 
write : ' When I would do good, evil is present with me.' 
But, in the vividness of his identification of his willing self 
with his better self against his sinning self, he could also 
write : ' So then it is no more I that do the sin.' Das radicale 
Bose of human nature is less radical than Kant supposed, and 
' the categorical imperative ' of duty less externally categorical 
than he alleged. Still it is the great merit of Kant's philo- 
sophy to have brought out with all possible emphasis, not 
merely as against the optimism of the shallow, but as against 
the hedonism of soberer people, that our life is a conflict 
between inclination and duty. The claims of duty are the 
higher ones. They are mandatory, absolute. We do our 
duty whether or not we superficially desire to do it. We 
do our duty whether or not we foresee advantage in having 
done it. We should do it if we foresaw with clearness dis- 
advantage. We should find our satisfaction in having done 
it, even at the cost of all our other satisfactions. There is a 
must which is over and above all our desires. This is what 
Kant really means by the categorical imperative. Neverthe- 
less, his statement comes in conflict with the principle of 
freedom, which is one of the most fundamental in his system. 
The phrases above used only eddy about the one point which 
is to be held fast. There may be that in the universe which 
destroys the man who does not conform to it, but in the last 
analysis he is self -destroyed, that is, he chooses not to conform. 
If he is saved, it is because he chooses thus to conform. Man 
would be then most truly man in resisting that which would 
merely overpower him, even if it were goodness. Of course, 
there can be no goodness which overpowers. There can be 
no goodness which is not willed. Nothing can be a motive 
except through awakening our desire. That which one 
desires is never wholly external to oneself. 

According to Kant, morality becomes religion when that 
which the former shows to be the end of man is conceived 
also to be the end of the supreme law-giver, God. Religion 
is the recognition of our duties as divine commands. The 

D 



50 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

distinction between revealed and natural religion is stated 
thus : In the former we know a thing to be a divine com- 
mand before we recognise it as our duty. In the latter we 
know it to be our duty before we recognise it as a divine 
command. Religion may be both natural and revealed. Its 
tenets may be such that man can be conceived as arriving at 
them by unaided reason. But he would thus have arrived 
at them at a later period in the evolution of the race. Hence 
revelation might be salutary or even necessary for certain 
times and places without being essential at all times or, for 
that matter, a permanent guarantee of the truth of religion. 
There is nothing here which is new or original with Kant. 
This line of reasoning was one by which men since Lessing 
had helped themselves over certain difficulties. It is cited only 
to show how Kant, too, failed to transcend his age in some 
matters, although he so splendidly transcended it in others. 

The orthodox had immemorially asserted that revelation 
imparted information not otherwise attainable, or not then 
attainable. The rationaUsts here allege the same. Kant 
is held fast in this view. Assuredly what revelation imparts 
is not information of any sort whatsoever, not even infor- 
mation concerning God. What revelation imparts is God 
himself, through the will and the affection, the practical 
reason. Revelation is experience, not instruction. The 
revealers are those who have experienced God, Jesus the 
foremost among them. They have experienced God, whom 
then they have manifested as best they could, but far more 
significantly in what they were than in what they said. There 
is surely the gravest exaggeration of what is statutory and 
external in that which Kant says of the relation of ethics 
and religion. How can we know that to be a command of 
God, which does not commend itself in our own heart and 
conscience ? The traditionalist would have said, by docu- 
ments miraculously confirmed. It was not in consonance 
with his noblest ideas for Kant to say that. On the other 
hand, that which I perceive to be my duty I, as religious man, 
feel to be a command of God, whether or not a mandate of 
God to that effect can be adduced. AVhether an alleged 



n.] IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY 51 

revelation from God inculcates such a truth or duty may be 
incidental. In a sense it is accidental. The content of all 
historic revelation is conditioned in the circumstances of the 
man to whom the revelation is addressed. It is clear that 
the whole matter of revelation is thus apprehended by Kant 
with more externality than we should have believed. His 
thought is still essentially archaic and dualistic. He is, 
therefore, now and theii upon the point of denying that such 
a thing as revelation is possible. The very idea of revelation, 
in this form, does violence to his fundamental principle of the 
autonomy of the human reason and will. At many points 
.in his reflection it is transparently clear that nothing can 
/|jever come to a man, or be given forth by him, which is not 
creatively shaped by himself. As regards revelation, how- 
ever, Kant never frankly took that step. The implications of 
his own system would have led him to that step. They led 
to an idea of revelation which was psychologically in har- 
mony with the assumptions of his system, and historically 
could be conceived as taking place without the interjection 
of the miraculous in the ordinary sense. If the divine reve- 
lation is to be thought as taking place within the human 
spirit, and in consonance with the laws of all other experience, 
then the human spirit must itself be conceived as standing in 
such relation to the divine that the eternal reason may express 
and reveal itself in the regular course of the mind's own 
activity. Then the manifold moral and religious ideals of 
mankind in all history must take their place as integral 
factors also in the progress of the divine revelation. 

When we come to the more specific topics of his religious 
teaching, freedom, immortaUty, God, Kant is prompt to 
assert that these cannot be objects of theoretical knowledge. 
Insoluble contradictions arise whenever a proof of them is 
attempted. If an object of faith could be demonstrated it 
would cease to be an object of faith. It would have been 
brought down out of the transcendental world. Were God 
to us an object among other objects, he would cease to be a 
God. Were the soul a demonstrable object like any other 
object, it would cease to be the transcendental aspect of 



52 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

ourselves. Kant makes short work of the so-called proofs for 
the existence of God which had done duty in the scholastic 
theology. With subtilty, sometimes also with bitter irony, 
he shows that they one and all assume that which they set 
out to prove. They are theoretically insufficient and prac- 
tically unnecessary. They have such high-sounding names — 
the ontological argument, the cosmological, the physico- 
theological — that almost in spite of ourselves we bring a 
reverential mood to them. They have been set forth with 
solemnity by such redoubtable thinkers that there is something 
almost startling in the way that Kant knocks them about. 
The fact that the ordinary man among us easily perceives that 
Kant was right shows only how the climate of the intellec- 
tual world has changed. Freedom, immortality, God, are not 
indeed provable. If given at all, they can be given only in 
the practical reason. Still they are postulates in the moral 
order which makes man the citizen of an intelligible world. 
There can be no ' ought ' for a being who is necessitated. 
We can perceive, and do perceive, that we ought to do a 
thing. It follows that we can do it. However, the hindrances 
to the realisation of the moral ideal are such that it cannot 
be realised in a finite time. Hence the postulate of eternal 
life for the individual. Finally, reason demands the realisation 
of a supreme good, both a perfect virtue and a correspond- 
ing happiness. Man is a final end only as a moral subject. 
There must be One who is not only the law-giver, but in 
himself also the realisation of the law of the moral world. 

Kant's moral argument thus steps out of the line of the 
others. It is not a proof at all in the sense in which they 
attempted to be proofs. The existence of God appears as a 
necessary assumption, if the highest good and value in the 
world are to be fulfilled. But the conception and possibiUty 
of realisation of a highest good is itself something which 
cannot be concluded with theoretical evidentiality. It is 
the object of a belief which in entire freedom is directed to 
that end. Kant lays stress upon the fact that among the 
practical ideas of reason, that of freedom is the one whose 
reaUty admits most nearly of being proved by the laws of 



n.] IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY ^3 

pure reason, as well as in conduct and experience. Upon an 
act of freedom, then, belief rests. ' It is the free holding that 
to be true, which for the fulfilment of a purpose we find neces- 
sary.' Now, as object of this ' free holding something to be 
true,' he sets forth the conception of the highest good in the 
world, to be realised through freedom. It is clear that before 
this argument would prove that a God is necessary to the 
realisation of the moral order, it would have to be shown 
that there are no adequate forces immanent within society 
itself for the establishment and fulfilment of that order. As 
a matter of fact, reflexion in the nineteenth century, de- 
voted as it has been to the evolution of society, has busied 
itself with hardly anything more than with the study of 
those immanent elements which make for morality. It is 
therefore not an external guarantor of morals, such as Kant 
thought, which is here given. It is the immanent God who 
is revealed in the history and hfe of the race, even as also it 
is the immanent God who is revealed in the consciousness of 
the individual soul. Even the moral argument, therefore, in 
the form in which Kant puts it, sounds remote and strange to 
us. His reasoning strains and creaks almost as if he were 
still trying to do that which he had just declared could not 
be done. What remains of significance for us, is this. All 
the debate about first causes, absolute beings, and the rest, 
gives us no God such as our souls need. If a man is to find 
the witness for soul, immortality and God at all, he must 
find it within himself and in the spiritual history of his fellows. 
He must venture, in freedom, the belief in these things, and 
find their corroboration in the contribution which they make 
to the solution of the mystery of life. One must venture to 
win them. One must continue to venture, to keep them. 
If it were not so, they would not be objects of faith. 

The source of the radical evil in man is an intelUgible 
act of human freedom not further to be explained. Moral 
evil is not, as such, transmitted. Moral qualities are insepar- 
able from the responsibility of the person who commits the 
deeds. Yet this radical disposition to evil is to be changed 
into a good one, not altogether by a process of moral refor- 



64 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

mation. There is such a thing as a fundamental revolution 
of a man's habit of thought, a conscious and voluntary trans- 
ference of a man's intention to obey, from the superficial and 
selfish desires which he has followed, to the deep and spiritual 
ones which he will henceforth allow. There is an epoch 
in a man's life when he makes the transition. He probably 
does it under the spell of personal influence, by the power of 
example, through the beauty of another personality. To 
Kant salvation was character. It was of and in and by 
character. To no thinker has the moral participation of a 

I man in the regeneration of his own character been more 
certain and necessary than to Kant. Yet the change in 
direction of the will generally comes by an impulse from 
without. It comes by the impress of a noble personahty. 

, It is sustained by enthusiasm for that personality. Kant 
has therefore a perfectly rational and ethical and vital 
meam'ng for the phrase ' new birth.' 

For the purpose of this impulse to goodness, nothing is so 
effective as the contemplation of an historical example of such 
surpassing moral grandeur as that which we behold in Jesus. 
For this reason we may look to Jesus as the ideal of goodness 
presented to us in flesh and blood. Yet the assertion that 
Jesus' historical personality altogether corresponds with the 
complete and eternal ethical ideal is one which we have no 
need to make. We do not possess in our own minds the 
absolute ideal with which in that assertion we compare him. 
The ethical ideal of the race is still in process of develop- 
ment. Jesus has been the greatest factor urging forward that 
development. We ourselves stand at a certain point in that 
development. We have the ideals which we have because 
we stand at that point at which we do. The men who come 
after us will have a worthier ideal than have we. Again, to 
say that Jesus in his words and conduct expressed in its 
totality the eternal ethical ideal, would make of his life 
something different from the real, human life. Every real, 
human life is lived within certain actual antitheses which 
call out certain qualities and do not call out others. They 
demand certain reactions and not others. This is the con- 



n.] IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY 65 

Crete element without which nothing historical can be con- 
ceived. To say that Jesus lived in entire conformity to the 
ethical ideal so far as we are able to conceive it, and within 
the circumstances which his own time and place imposed, is 
the most that we can say. But in any case, Kant insists, 
the real object of our religious faith is not the historic man, 
but the ideal of humanity well-pleasing to God. Since this 
ideal is not of our own creation, but is given us in our super- 
sensible nature, it may be conceived as the Son of God come 
down from heaven. 

The turn of this last phrase is an absolutely characteristic 
one, and brings out another quality of Kant's mind in dealing 
with the Christian doctrines. They are to him but symbols, 
forms into which a variety of meanings may be run. He had 
no great appreciation of the historical element in doctrine. 
He had no deep sense of the social element and of that for 
which Christian institutions stand. We may illustrate with 
that which he says concerning Christ's vicarious sacrifice. 
Substitution cannot take place in the moral world. Ethical 
salvation could not be conferred through such a substitution, 
even if this could take place. Still, the conception of the 
vicarious suffering of Christ may be taken as a symbolical 
expression of the idea that in the pain of self -discipline, of 
obedience and patience, the new man in us suffers, as it were 
vicariously, for the old. The atonement is a continual ethical 
process in the heart of the religious man. It is a grave defect 
of Kant's religious philosophy, that it was so absolutely 
individualistic. Had he realised more deeply than he did the 
social character of religion and the meaning of these doctrines, 
not alone as between man and God, but as between man and 
man, he surely would have drawn nearer to that interpretation 
of the doctrine of the atonement which has come more and 
more to prevail. This is the solution which finds in the 
atonement of Christ the last and most glorious example of 
a universal law of human life and history. That law is that 
no redemptive good for men is ever secured without the 
suffering and sacrifice of those who seek to confer that good 
upon their fellows. Kant was disposed to regard the tradi- 



66 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

tional forms of Christian doctrine, not as the old rationaUsm 
had done, as impositions of a priesthood or inherently absurd. 
He sought to divest them indeed of that which was specu- 
latively untrue, though he saw in them only symbols of the 
great moral truths which lie at the heart of religion. The 
historical spirit of the next fifty years was to teach men a very 
different way of dealing with these same doctrines. 



Kant had said that the primary condition, fundamental 
not merely to knowledge, but to all connected experience, is 
the knowing, experiencing, thinking, acting self. It is that 
which says ' I,' the ego, the permanent subject. But that is 
not enough. The knowing self demands in turn a knowable 
world. It must have something outside of itself to which it 
yet stands related, the object of knowledge. Knowledge is 
somehow the combination of these two, the result of their co- 
operation. How have we to think of this co-operation ? Both 
Hume and Berkeley had ended in scepticism as to the reality 
of knowledge. Hume was in doubt as to the reality of the 
subject, Berkeley as to that of the object. Kant dissented 
from both. He vindicated the undoubted reality of the 
impression which we have concerning a thing. Yet how far 
that impression is the reproduction of the thing as it is in 
itself, we can never perfectly know. What we have in our 
minds is not the object. It is a notion of that object, although 
we may be assured that we could have no such notion were 
there no object. Equally, the notion is what it is because the 
subject is what it is. We can never get outside the processes 
of our own thought. We cannot know the thing as it is, the 
Ding-an-sich, in Kant's phrase. We know only that there 
must be a * thing in itself.' 

FiCHTB 

Fichte asked, Why ? Why must there be a Ding-an-sich ? 
Why is not that also the result of the activity of the ego ? 



n.] IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY 57 

Why is not the ego, the thinking subject, all that is, the creator 
of the world, according to the laws of thought ? If so much 
is reduced to idea, why not all ? This was Fichte's rather 
forced resolution of the old dualism of thought and thing. 
It is not the denial of the reality of things, but the assertion 
that their ideal element, that part of them which is not mere 
' thing,' the action and subject of the action, is their under- 
lying reality. According to Kant things exist in a world 
beyond us. Man has no faculty by which he can penetrate 
into that world. Still, the farther we follow Kant in his 
analysis the more does the contribution to knowledge from 
the side of the mind tend to increase, and the more does the 
factor in our impressions from the side of things tend to fade 
away. This basis of impression being wholly unknowable is as 
good as non-existent for us. Yet it never actually disappears. 
There would seem to be inevitable a sort of kernel of matter 
or prick of sense about which all our thoughts are generated. 
Yet this residue is a vanishing quantity. This seemed to 
Fichte to be a self-contradiction and a half-way measure. 
Only two positions appeared to him thorough-going and 
consequent. Eitlier one posits as fundamental the thing 
itself, matter, independent of any consciousness of it. So 
Spinoza had taught. Or else one takes consciousness, the 
conscious subject, independent of any matter or thing as 
fundamental. This last Fichte claimed to be the real issue of 
Kant's thought. He asserts that from the point of view of the 
thing in itself we can never explain knowledge. We may be 
as skilful as possible in placing one thing behind another in 
the relation of cause to effect. It is, however, an unending 
series. It is like the cosmogony of the Eastern people which 
fabled that the earth rests upon the back of an elephant. 
The elephant stands upon a tortoise. The question is, upon 
what does the tortoise stand ? So here, we may say, in the 
conclusive manner in which men have always said, that God 
made the world. Yet sooner or later we come to the child's 
question : Who made God ? Fichte rightly replied : ' If 
God is for us only an object of knowledge, the Ding-an-sich at 
the end of the series, there is no escape from the answer that 



58 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

man, the thinker, in thinking God made him.' All the world, 
including man, is but the reflexion, the revelation in forms 
of the finite, of an unceasing action of thought of which the 
ego is the subject. Nothing more paradoxical than this 
conclusion can be imagined. It seems to make the human 
subject, the man myself, the creator of the universe, and the 
universe only that which I happen to think it to be. 

This interpretation was at first put upon Fichte's reasoning 
with such vigour that he was accused of atheism. He was 
driven from his chair in Jena. Only after several years was 
he called to a corresponding post in Berlin. Later, in his 
Vocation of Man, he brought his thought to clearness in this 
form : ' If God be only the object of thought, it remains true 
that he is then but the creation of man's thought. God is, 
however, to be understood as subject, as the real subject, 
the transcendent thinking and knowing subject, indwelling in 
the world and making the world what it is, indwelling in us 
and making us what we are. We ourselves are subjects only 
in so far as we are parts of God. We think and know only 
in so far as God thinks and knows and acts and lives in us. 
The world, including ourselves, is but the reflection of the 
thought of God, who thus only has existence. Neither the 
world nor we have existence apart from him.' 

Johann Gottheb Fichte was born at Rammenau in 1762. 
His father was a ribbon weaver. He came of a family dis- 
tinguished for piety and uprightness. He studied at Jena, 
and became an instructor there in 1793. He was at first a 
devout disciple of Kant, but gradually separated himself 
from his master. There is a humorous tale as to one of his 
early books which was, through mistake of the pubUsher, put 
forth without the author's name. For a brief time it was 
hailed as a work of Kant — ^his Critique of Revelation, Fichte 
was a man of high moral enthusiasms, very uncompromising, 
unable to put himself in the place of an opponent, in incessant 
strife. The great work of his Jena period was his Wissen- 
schaftslehre, 1794. His popular works, Die Bestimmung des 
Menschen and Anweisung zum seligen Leben, belong to his 
Berlin period. The disasters of 1806 drove him out of Berlin. 



tt] IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY 59 

Amidst the dangers and discouragements of the next few 
years he wrote his famous Reden an die deutsche Nation, He 
drew up the plan for the founding of the University of Berlin. 
In 1810 he was called to be rector of the newly established 
university. He was, perhaps, the chief adviser of Frederick 
William iii. in the laying of the foundations of the university, 
which was surely a notable venture for those trying years. 
In the autumn of 1812 and again in 1813, when the hospitals 
were full of sick and wounded after the Russian and Leipzig 
campaigns, Fichte and his wife were unceasing in their care 
of the sufferers. He died of fever contracted in the hospital 
in January 1814. 

According to Fichte, as we have seen, the world of sense 
is the reflection of our own inner activity. It exists for us as 
the sphere and material of our duty. The moral order only 
I is divine. We, the finite intelligences, exist only in and 
through the infinite intelligence. All our Ufe is thus God's 
life. We are immortal because he is immortal. Our con- 
sciousness is his consciousness. Our life and moral force is 
his, the reflection and manifestation of his being, individua- 
tion of the infinite reason which is everywhere present in 
the finite. In God we see the world also in a new light. 
There is no longer any nature which is external to ourselves 
and unrelated to ourselves. There is only God manifesting 
himself in nature. Even the evil is only a means to good and, 
therefore, only an apparent evil. We are God's immediate 
manifestation, being spirit like himself. The world is his 
mediate manifestation. The world of dead matter, as men 
have called it, does not exist. God is the reality within the 
forms of nature and within ourselves, by which alone we have 
reality. The duty to which a God outside of ourselves could 
only command us, becomes a privilege to which we need no 
commandment, but to the fulfilment of which, rather, we are 
drawn in joy by the forces of our own being. How a man 
could, even in the immature stages of these thoughts, have 
been persecuted for atheism, it is not easy to see, although 
we may admit that his earlier forms of statement were be- 
wildering. When we have his whole thought before us we 



60 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ciL 

\ should say rather that it borders on acosmic pantheism, for 
which everything is God and the world does not exist. 

We have no need to follow Fichte farther. Suffice it to 
say, with reference to the theory of knowledge, that he had 
discovered that one could not stand still with Kant. One 
must either go back toward the position of the old empiri- 
cism which assumed the reality of the world exactly as it 
appeared, or else one must go forward to an idealism more 
thorough-going than Kant had planned. Of the two paths 
which, with all the vast advance of the natural sciences, the 
thought of the nineteenth century might traverse, that of the 
denial of everything except the mechanism of nature, and that 
of the assertion that nature is but the organ of spirit and is 
instinct with reason, Fichte chose the latter and blazed out 
the path along which all the idealists have followed him. In 
reference to the philosophy of religion, we must say that, with 
all the extravagance, the pantheism and mysticism of his 
phrases, Fichte's great contribution was his breaking down 
of the old dualism between God and man which was still 
fundamental to Kant. It was his assertion of the unity of 
man and God and of the life of God in man. This thought 
has been appropriated in all of modern theology. 

SCHELLING 

It was the meagreness of Fichte's treatment of nature 
which impelled Schelling to what he called his outbreak into 
reality. Nature will not be dismissed, as simply that which 
is not I. You cannot say that nature is only the sphere of 
my self-realisation. Individuals are in their way the children 
of nature. They are this in respect of their souls as much 
as of their bodies. Nature was before they were. Nature is, 
moreover, not aUen to intelligence. On the contrary, it is 
a treasure-house of intelligible forms which demand to be 
treated as such. It appeared to Schelling, therefore, a truer 
idealism to work out an intelligible system of nature, exhibit- 
ing its essential oneness with personality. 

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling was born in 1775 



n.] IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY 61 

at Leonberg in Wiirttemberg. His father was a clergyman. 
He was precocious in his intellectual development and much 
spoiled by vanity. Before he was twenty years old he had 
published three works upon problems suggested by Fichte. 
At twenty-three he was extraordinarius at Jena. He had 
apparently a brilliant career before him. He published his 
Erster Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie, 1799, and 
also his System des transcendentalen Idealismus, 1800. Even 
his short residence at Jena was troubled by violent conflicts 
with his colleagues. It was brought to an end by his 
marriage with the wife of Augustus von Schlegel, who had 
been divorced for the purpose. From 1806 to 1841 he lived in 
Munich in retirement. The long-expected books which were 
to fulfil his early promise never appeared. Hegel's stricture 
was just. Schelling had no taste for the prolonged and 
intense labour which his brilliant early works marked out. 
He died in 1854, having reached the age of seventy-nine 
years, of which at least fifty were as melancholy and fruitless 
as could well be imagined. 

The dominating idea of Schelling's philosophy of nature 
may be said to be the exhibition of nature as the progress of 
intelligence toward consciousness and personality. Nature 
is the ego in evolution, personality in the making. All 
natural objects are visible analogues and counterparts of 
mind. The intelligence which their structure reveals, men 
had interpreted as residing in the mind of a maker of the 
world. Nature had been spoken of as if it were a watch. 
God was its great artificer. No one asserted that its intelli- 
gence and power of development lay within itself. On the 
contrary, nature is always in the process of advance from 
lower, less highly organised and less intelligible forms, to 
those which are more highly organised, more nearly the 
counterpart of the active intelligence in man himself. The 
personality of man had been viewed as standing over against 
nature, this last being thought of as static and permanent. 
On the contrary, the personality of man, with all of its in- 
telligence and free will, is but the climax and fulfilment of a 
long succession of intelligible forms in nature, passing upward 



62 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ca. 

from the inorganic to the organic, from the unconscious to the 
conscious, from the non-moral to the moral, as these are at 
last seen in man. Of course, it was the life of organic nature 
which first suggested this notion to Schelling. An organism 
is a self -moving, self -producing whole. It is an idea in process 
of self-realisation. What was observed in the organism was 
then made by Schelling the root idea of universal nature. 
Nature is in all its parts hving, self-moving along the lines 
of its development, productivity and product both in one. 
Empirical science may deal with separate products of nature. 
It may treat them as objects of analysis and investigation. 
It may even take the whole of nature as an object. But 
nature is not mere object. Philosophy has to treat of the 
inner life which moves the whole of nature as intelligible 
productivity, as subject, no longer as object. Personality 
has slowly arisen out of nature. Nature was going through 
this process of self-development before there were any men 
to contemplate it. It would go through this process were 
there no longer men to contemplate it. 

Schelling has here rounded out the theory of absolute 
ideaUsm which Fichte had carried through in a one-sided 
way. He has given us also a wonderful anticipation of certain 
modern ideas concerning nature, a preparation for the doc- 
trine of evolution, which is a stroke of genius in its way. He 
attempted to arrange the realm of unconscious intelligences 
in an ascending series, which should bridge the gulf between 
the lowest of natural forms and the fully equipped organism in 
which self-consciousness, with the intellectual, the emotional, 
and moral life, at last emerges. Inadequate material and a 
fondness for analogies led SchelUng into vagaries in following 
out this scheme. Nevertheless, it is only in detail that we 
can look askance at his attempt. In principle our own con- 
ception of the universe is the same. It is the dynamic view 
of nature and an application of the principle of evolution in 
the widest sense. His errors were those into which a man 
was bound to fall who undertook to forestall by a sweep 
of the imagination that which has been the result of the 
detailed and patient investigation of three generations. What 



n.] IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY 63 

Schelling attempted was to take nature as we know it and 
to exhibit it as in reality a function of intelligence, pointing, 
through all the gradations of its varied forms, towards its 
necessary goal in self-conscious personality. Instead, there- 
fore, of our having in nature and personality two things 
which cannot be brought together, these become members 
of one great organism of intelligence of which the immanent 
God is the source and the sustaining power. These ideas 
constitute Schelling's contribution to an idealistic and, of 
course, an essentially monistic view of the universe. The 
unity of man with God, Fichte had asserted. Schelling set 
forth the oneness of God and nature, and again of man and 
nature. The circle was complete. 



If we have succeeded in conveying a clear idea of the move- 
ment of thought from Kant to Hegel, that idea might be 
stated thus. There are but three possible objects which can 
engage the thought of man. These are nature and man and 
God. There is the universe, of which we become aware 
through experience from our earliest childhood. Then there 
is man, the man given in self-consciousness, primarily the 
man myself. In this sense man seems to stand over against 
nature. Then, as the third possible object of thought, we have 
God. Upon the thought of God we usually come from the 
point of view of the category of cause. God is the name 
which men give to that which lies behind nature and man as 
the origin and explanation of both. Plato's chief interest 
was in man. He talked much concerning a God who was 
somehow the speculative postulate of the spiritual nature in 
man. Aristotle began a real observation of nature. But the 
ancient and, still more, the mediaeval study of nature was 
dominated by abstract and theological assumptions. These 
prevented any real study of that nature in the midst of which 
man lives, in reaction against which he develops his powers, 
and to which, on one whole side of his nature, he belongs. 
Even in respect of that which men reverently took to be 



64 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

thought concerning God, they seem to have been unaware how 
much of their material was imaginative and poetic symbohsm 
drawn from the experience of man. The traditional idea . 
of revelation proved a disturbing factor. Assuming that / 
revelation gave information concerning God, and not rather 
the religious experience of communion with God himself, 
men accepted statements of the documents of revelation as 
if they had been definitions graciously given from out the 
realm of the unseen. In reality, they were but fetches from 
out the world of the known into the world of the unknown. 

The point of interest is this : — In all possible combinations 
in which, throughout the history of thought, these three 
objects had been set, the one with the others, they had always 
remained three objects. There was no essential relation of 
the one to the other. They were like the points of a triangle 
of which any one stood over against the other two. God 
stood over against the man whom he had fashioned, man 
over against the God to whom he was responsible. The 
consequences for theology are evident. When men wished 
to describe, for example, Jesus as the Son of God, they laid 
emphasis upon every quality which he had, or was supposed 
to have, which was not common to him with other men. 
They lost sight of that profound interest of religion which 
has always claimed that, in some sense, all men are sons of 
God and Jesus was the son of man. Jesus was then only 
truly honoured as divine when every trait of his humanity 
was ignored. Similarly, when men spoke of revelation they 
laid emphasis upon those particulars in which this supposed 
method of coming by information was unlike all other 
methods. Knowledge derived directly from God through 
revelation was in no sense the parallel of knowledge derived 
by men in any other way. So also God stood over against 
nature. God was indeed declared to have made nature. 
He had, however, but given it, so to say, an original impulse. 
That impulse also it had in some strange way lost or per- 
verted, so that the world, though it had been made by God, 
was not good. For the most part it moved itself, although 
God's sovereignty was evidenced in that he could still super- 



II.] IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY 65 

vene upon it, if he chose. The supernatural was the realm 
of God. Natural and supernatural were mutually exclusive 
terms, just as we saw that divine and human were exclusive 
terms. So also, on the third side of our triangle, man stood 
over against nature. Nature was to primitive men the 
realm of caprice, in which they imagined demons, spirits and 
the like. These were antagonistic to men, as also hostile to 
God. Then, when with the advance of reflexion these 
spirits, and equally their counterparts, the good genii and 
angels, had all died, nature became the realm of iron neces- 
sity, of regardless law, of all-destroying force, of cruel and 
indifferent fate. From this men took refuge in the thought 
of a compassionate God, though they could not withdraw 
themselves or those whom they loved from the inexorable 
laws of nature. They could not see that God always, or even 
often, intervened on their behalf. It cannot be denied that 
these ideas prevail to some extent in the popular theology 
at the present moment. Much of our popular religious 
language is an inheritance from a time when they universally 
prevailed. The religious intuition even of psalmists and 
prophets opposed many of these notions. The pure religious 
intuition of Jesus opposed almost every one of them. Mystics 
in every religion have had, at times, insight into an altogether 
different scheme of things. The philosophy, however, even 
of the learned, would, in the main, have supported the views 
above described, from the dawn of reflexion almost to our 
own time. 

It was Kant who flrst began the resolution of this three- 
cornered difficulty. When he pointed out that into the world, 
as we know it, an element of spirit goes, that in it an element 
of the ideal inheres, he began a movement which has issued 
in modern monism. He affirmed that that element from 
my thought which enters into the world, as I know it, may 
be so great that only just a point of matter and a prick of 
sense remains. Fichte said : ' Why do we put it all in so 
perverse a way ? Why reduce the world of matter to just 
a point ? Why is it not taken for what it is, and yet under- 
stood to be all alive with God and we able to think of it, 



66 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

because we are parts of the great thinker God ? ' Still Fichte 
had busied himself almost wholly with consciousness. Schel- 
ling endeavoured to correct that. Nature lives and moves 
in God, just as truly in one way as does man in another. 
Men arise out of nature. A circle has been drawn through 
the points of our triangle. Nature and man are in a new 
and deeper sense revelations of God. In fact, supplementing 
one another, they constitute the only possible channels for 
the manifestation of God. It hardly needs to be said that 
these thoughts are widely appropriated in our modern world. 
These once novel speculations of the kings of thought have 
made their way slowly to all strata of society. Remote and 
difficult in their first expression in the language of the schools, 
their implications are to-day on everybody's lips. It is this 
unitary view of the universe which has made difficult the 
acceptance of a theology, the understanding of a religion, 
which are still largely phrased in the language of a philosophy 
to which these ideas did not belong. There is not an historic 
creed, there is hardly a greater system of theology, which is 
not stated in terms of a philosophy and science which no 
longer reign. Men are asking : ' cannot Christianity be so 
stated and interpreted that it shall meet the needs of men 
of the twentieth century, as truly as it met those of men of 
the first or of the sixteenth ? ' Hegel, the last of this great 
group of idealistic philosophers whom we shall name, en- 
thusiastically believed in this new interpretation of the faith 
which was profoundly dear to him. He made important 
contribution to that interpretation. 

Hegel 

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was bom in Stuttgart in 
1770. His father was in the fiscal service of the King of 
Wiirttemberg. He studied in Tiibingen. He was heavy and 
slow of development, in striking contrast with Schelling. 
He served as tutor in Bern and Frankfort, and began to lecture 
in Jena in 1801. He was much overshadowed by Schelling. 
The victory of Napoleon at Jena in 1806 closed the university 



n.] IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY 67 

for a time. In I8I8 he was called to Fichte's old chair in 
Berlin. Never on very good terms with the Prussian Govern- 
ment, he yet showed his large sympathy with life in every 
way. After 1820 a school of philosophical thinkers began 
to gather about him. His first great book, his Phenomeno- 
logie des Geistes 1807 (translated, Baillie, London, 1910), was 
published at the end of his Jena period. His Philosophie der 
Religion and Philosophie der Geschichte were edited after his 
death. They are mainly in the form which his notes took 
between 1823 and 1827. He died during an epidemic of 
cholera in Berlin in 1831. 

Besides his deep interest in history the most striking feature 
of Hegel's preliminary training was his profound study of 
Christianity. He might almost be said to have turned to 
philosophy as a means of formulating the ideas which he had 
conceived concerning the development of the religious con- 
sciousness, which seemed to him to have been the bearer of all 
human culture. No one could fail to see that the idea of the 
relation of God and man, of which we have been speaking, 
was bound to make itself felt in the interpretation of the 
doctrine of the incarnation and of all the dogmas, like that 
of the trinity, which are connected with it. Characteristically, 
Hegel had pure joy in the speculative aspects of the problem. 
If one may speak in all reverence, and, at the same time, not 
without a shade of humour, Hegel rejoiced to find himself 
able, as.he supposed, to rehabilitate the dogma of the trinity, 
rationalised in approved fashion. It is as if the dogma had 
been a revered form or mould, which was for him indeed 
emptied of its original content. He felt bound to fill it anew. 
Or to speak more justly, he was really convinced that the new 
meaning which he poured into the dogma was the true meaning 
which the Church Fathers had been seeking all the while. 
In the light of two generations of sober dealing, as historians, 
with such problems, we can but view his solution in a manner 
very different from that which he indulged. He was even 
disposed mildly to censure the professional theologians for 
leaving the defence of the doctrine of the trinity to the philo- 
sophers. There were then, and have since been, defenders 



68 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

of the doctrine who have thought that Hegel rendered them 
great aid. As a matter of fact, despite his own utter serious- 
ness and reverent desire, his solution was a complete dis- 
solution of the doctrine and of much else besides. His view 
would have been fatal, not merely to that particular form 
of orthodox thought, but, what is much more serious, to the 
religious meaning for which it stood. Sooner or later men 
have seen that the whole drift of Hegelianism was to transform 
religion into intellectuaUsm. One might say that it was 
exactly this which the ancient metaphysicians, in the classic 
doctrine of the trinity, had done. They had transformed 
religion into metaphysics. The matter would not have been 
remedied by having a modem metaphysician do the same 
thing in another way. 

Hegel was weary of Fichte's endless discussion of the ego 
and Schelling's of the absolute. It was not the abyss of the 
unknowable from which things are said to come, or that into 
which they go, which interested Hegel. It was their process 
and progress which we can know. It was that part of their 
movement which is observable within actual experience, 
with which he was concerned. Now one of the laws of the 
movement of all things, he said, is that by which every 
thought suggests, and every force tends directly to produce, 
its opposite. Nothing stands alone. Everything exists by 
the balance and friction of opposing tendencies. We have 
the universal contrasts of heat and cold, of Ught and darkness, 
of inward and outward, of static and dynamic, of yes and no. 
There are two sides to every case, democratic government 
and absolutism, freedom of rehgion and authority, the in- 
dividualistic and the social principles, a materiahstic and a 
spiritual interpretation of the universe. Only things which 
are dead have ceased to have this tide and alternation. 
Christ is for living religion now a man, now God, revelation 
now natural, now supernatural. Rehgion is the eternal con- 
flict between reason and faith, morals the struggle of good 
and evil, God now mysterious and now manifest. 

Fichte had said : The essence of the universe is spirit. Hegel 
said : Yes, but the true notion of spirit is that of the resolution 



n.] IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY 69 

of contradiction, of the exhibition of opposites as held to- 
gether in their unity. This is the meaning of the trinity. In 
the trinity we have God who wills to manifest himself, Jesus 
in whom he is manifest, and the spirit common to them both. 
God's existence is not static, it is dynamic. It is motion, 
not rest. God is revealer, recipient, and revelation all in one. 
The trinity was for Hegel the central doctrine of Christianity. 
Popular orthodoxy had drawn near to the assertion of three 
Gods. The revolt, however, in asserting the unity of God, 
had made of God a meaningless absolute as foundation of 
the universe. The orthodox, in respect to the person of 
Christ, had always indeed asserted in laboured way that Jesus 
was both God and man. Starting from their own abstract 
conception of God, and attributing to Jesus the qualities of 
that abstraction, they had ended in making of the humanity 
of Jesus a perfectly unreal thing. On the other hand, those 
who had set out from Jesus's real humanity had been unable 
to see that he was anything more than a mere man, as 
their phrase was. On their own assumption of the mutual 
exclusiveness of the conceptions of God and man, they could 
not do otherwise. 
\ Hegel saw clearly that God can be known to us only in 
and through manifestation. We can certainly make no 
predication as to how God exists, in himself, as men say, and 
apart from our knowledge. He exists for our knowledge 
only as manifest in nature and man. Man is for Hegel 
part of nature and Jesus is the highest point which the 
nature of God as manifest in man has reached. In this 
sense Hegel sometimes even calls nature the Son of God, and 
mankind and Jesus are thought of as parts of this one mani- 
festation of God. If the Scripture asserts, as it seemed to the 
framers of the creeds to do, that God manifested himself from 
before all worlds in and to a self-conscious personality like 
his own, Hegel would answer : But the Scripture is no third 
source of knowledge, besides nature and man. Scripture is 
only the record of God's revelation of himself in and to men. 
If these men framed their profoundest thought in this way, 
that is only because they lived in an age when men had all 



70 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

their thoughts of this sort in a form which we can historically 
trace. For Platonists and Neoplatonists, such as the makers 
of the creeds — and some portions of the Scripture show this 
influence, as well — the divine, the ideal, was always thought of 
as eternal. It always existed as pure archetype before it ever 
existed as historic fact. The rabbins had a speculation to the 
same effect. The divine which exists must have pre-existed. 
Jesus as Son of God could not be thought of by the ancient 
world in any terms but these. The divine was static, change- 
lessly perfect. For the modern man the divinest of all things 
is the mystery of growth. The perfect man is not at the 
beginning, but far down the immeasurable series of approaches 
to perfection. The perfection of other men is the work of 
still other ages, in which this extraordinary and inexplicable 
moral magnitude which Jesus is, has had its influence, and 
conferred upon them power to aid them in the fulfilment of 
God's intent for themselves, which is Uke that intent for 
himself which Jesus has fulfilled. 

Surely enough has been said to show that what we have 
here is only the absorption of even the profoundest religious 
meanings into the vortex of an all-dissolving metaphysical 
system. The most obvious meaning of the phrase ' Son of 
God,' its moral and spiritual, its real religious meaning, is 
dwelt on, here in Hegel, as Uttle as Hegel claimed that the 
Nicene trinitarians had dwelt upon it. Nothing marks more 
clearly the distance we have travelled since Hegel than does 
the general recognition that his attempted solution does not 
even he in the right direction. It is an attempt within the 
same area as that of the Nicene Council and the creeds, 
namely, the metaphysical area. What is at stake is not the 
pre-existence or the two natures. Hegel was right in what he 
said concerning these. The pre-existence cannot be thought 
of except as ideal. The two natures we assert for every man, 
only not in such a manner as to destroy unity in the per- 
sonality. The heart of the dogma is not in these. It is the 
oneness of God and man, a moral and spiritual oneness, one- 
ness in conduct and consciousness, the presence and realisation 
of God, who is spirit, in a real man, the divineness of Jesus, 



n.] IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY 71 

in a sense which sees no meaning any longer in the old debate 
as between his divinity and his deity. 

In the light of the new theory of the universe which we have 
reviewed, it flashes upon us that both defenders and assailants 
of the doctrine of the incarnation, in the age-long debate, 
have proceeded from the assumption that God and man are 
opposites. Men contended for the divineness of Jesus in 
terms which by definition shut out his true humanity. They 
asserted the identity of a real man, a true historic personage, 
with an abstract notion of God which had actually been 
framed by the denial of all human qualities. Their opponents 
with a like helplessness merely reversed the situation. To 
admit the deity of Jesus would have been for them, in all 
candour and clear-sightedness, absolutely impossible, because 
the admission would have shut out his true humanity. On 
the old definitions we cannot wonder that the struggle was a 
bitter one. Each party was on its own terms right. If God 
is by definition other than man, and man the opposite of God, 
then it is not surprising that the attempt to say that Jesus 
of Nazareth was both, remained mysticism to the one and 
seemed folly to the other. 

Now, within the area of the philosophy which begins with 
Kant this old antinomy has been resolved. An actual circle 
of clear relations joins the points of the old hopeless triangle. 
Men are men because of God indwelling in them, working 
through them. The phrase * mere man ' is seen to be a mere 
phrase. To say that the Nazarene, in some way not geneti- 
cally to be explained, but which is hidden within the recesses 
of his own personality, shows forth in incomparable fulness 
that relation of God and man which is the ideal for us all, 
seems only to be saying over again what Jesus said when 
he proclaimed : * I and My Father are one.' That Jesus 
actualised, not absolutely in the sense that he stood out of 
relation to history, but still perfectly within his relation to 
history, that which in us and for us is potential, the sonship 
of God — that seems a very simple and intelligible assertion. It 
certainly makes a large part of the debate of ages seem remote 
from us. It brings home to us that we live in a new world. 



72 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

Interesting and fruitful is Hegel's expansion of the idea 
of redemption beyond that of the individual to that of the 
whole humanity, and in every aspect of its life. In my 
relation to the world are given my duties. The renunciation 
of outward duty makes the inward life barren. The principle 
which is to transform the world wears an aspect very different 
from that of stoicism, of asceticism or even of the individual- 
ism which has sought soul-salvation. In the midst of un- 
worthiness and helplessness there springs up the consciousness 
of reconcihation. Man, with all his imperfections, becomes 
aware that he is the object of the loving purpose of God. 
Still this redemption of a man is something which is to be 
worked out, in the individual hfe and on the stage of universal 
history. The first step beyond the individual life is that of 
the Church. It is from within this community of behevers 
that men, in the rule, receive the impulse to the good. The 
commimity is, in its idea, a society in which the conquest of 
evil is already being achieved, where the individual is spared 
much bitter conflict and loneliness. Nevertheless, so long 
as this unity of the hfe of man with God is realised in the 
Church alone there remains a false and harmful opposition 
between the Church and the world. Religion is faced by a 
hostile power to which its principles have no application. 
The world is denounced as unholy. With this stigma cast 
upon it, it may be unholy. Yet the retribution falls also 
upon the Church, in that it becomes artificial, clerical, phari- 
saical. The end is never that what have been called the 
standards of the Church shall prevail. The end is that the 
Church shall be the shrine and centre of an influence by 
virtue of which the standard of truth and goodness which 
naturally belongs to any relation of life shall prevail. The 
distinction between rehgion and secular life must be aban- 
doned. Nothing is less sacred than a Church set on its own 
aggrandisement. The relations of family and of the State, 
of business and social hfe, are to be restored to the divineness 
which belongs to them, or rather, the divineness which is in- 
ahenable from them is to be recognised. In the laws and 
customs of a true State, Christianity first penetrates with ita 



n.] IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY 73 

principles the real world. One sees how large a portion of 
these thoughts have been taken up into the programme of 
modem social movements. They are the basis of what men 
call a social theology. A book like Fremantle's World as the 
Subject of Redemption is their thorough-going exposition in 
the English tongue. 

We have no cause to pursue the philosophical movement 
beyond this point. Its exponents are not without interest. 
Especially is this true of Schopenhauer. But the deposit 
from their work is for our particular purpose not great. 
The wonderful impulse had spent itself. These four brilliant 
men stand together, almost as much isolated from the genera- 
tion which followed them as from that which went before. 
The historian of Christian thought in the nineteenth century 
cannot overestimate the significance of their personal interest 
in religion. 



74 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 



CHAPTER III 

THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 

The outstanding trait of Kant's reflection upon religion is 
its supreme interest in morals and conduct. Metaphysician 
that he was, Kant saw the evil which intellectuaUsm had done 
to religion. Religion was a profoundly real thing to him in 
his own life. ReUgion is a Ufe. It is a system of thought 
only because life is a whole. It is a system of thought only 
in the way of deposit from a vivid and vigorous life. A man 
normally reflects on the conditions and aims of what he does. 
Religion is conduct. Ends in character are supreme. Re- 
hgions and the many interpretations of Christianity have 
been good or bad, according as they ministered to character. 
So strong was this ethical trait in Kant that it dwarfed all 
else. He was not himself a man of great breadth or richness 
of feeling. He was not a man of imagination. His religion 
was austere, not to say arid. Hegel was before all things an 
intellectualist. Speculation was the breath of Kfe to him. 
He had metaphysical gem'us. He tended to transform in this 
direction everything which he touched. ReUgion is thought. 
He criticised the rationaUst movement from the height of 
vantage which idealism had reached. But as pure intel- 
lectualist he would put most rationalists to shame. We owe 
to this temperament his zeal for an interpretation of the 
universe ' aU in one piece.' Its highest quahty would be its 
abstract truth. His understanding of religion had the glory 
and the Umitations which attend this view. 

SCHLEIERMACHER 

Between Kant and Hegel came another, Schleiermacher. 
He too was no jnean philosopher. But he was essentially 



III.] THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 75 

a theologian, the founder of modern theology. He served in 
the same faculty with Hegel and was overshadowed by him. 
His influence upon religious thought was less immediate. 
It has been more permanent. It was characteristically upon 
the side which Kant and Hegel had neglected. That was the 
side of feeling. His theology has been called the theology of 
feeling. He defined religion as feeling. Christianity is for 
him a specific feeling. Because he made so much of feeling, 
his name has been made a theological household word by 
many who appropriated Uttle else of all he had to teach. His 
warmth and passion, his enthusiasm for Christ, the central 
place of Christ in his system, made him loved by many who, 
had they understood him better, might have loved him less. 
For his real greatness lay, not in the fact that he possessed 
these qualities alone, but that he possessed them in a 
singularly beautiful combination with other qualities. The 
emphasis is, however, correct. He was the prophet of feeling, 
as Kant had been of ethical religion and Hegel of the intel- 
lectuality of faith. The entire Protestant theology of the 
nineteenth century has felt his influence. The English- 
speaking race is almost as much his debtor as is his own. 
The French Huguenots of the revival felt him to be one of 
themselves. Even to Amiel and Scherer he was a kindred 
spirit. 

It is a true remark of Dilthey that in unusual degree an 
understanding of the man's personality and career is neces- 
sary to the appreciation of his thought. Friedrich Ernst 
Daniel Schleiermacher was born in 1768 in Breslau, the son 
of a chaplain in the Reformed Church. He never connected 
himself officially with the Lutheran Church. We have 
alluded to an episode broadly characteristic of his youth. 
He was tutor in the house of one of the landed nobility of 
Prussia, curate in a country parish, preacher at the Charite 
in Berlin in 1795, professor extraordinarius at Halle in 1804, 
preacher at the Church of the Dreifaltigkeit in Berlin in 1807, 
professor of theology and organiser of that faculty in the newly- 
founded University of Berlin in 1810. He never gave up his 
position as pastor and preacher, maintaining this activity along 



76 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

with his unusual labours as teacher, executive and author. 
He died in 1834. In his earher years in BerKn he belonged to 
the circle of brilliant men and women who made Berhn 
famous in those years. It was a fashionable society com- 
posed of persons more or less of the rationahstic school. Not 
a few of them, like the Schlegels, were deeply tinged with 
romanticism. There were also among them Jews of the house 
of the elder Mendelssohn. Morally it was a society not 
altogether above reproach. Its opposition to religion was a 
by-word. An affection of the susceptible youth for a woman 
unhappily married brought him to the verge of despair. 
It was an affection which his passing pride as romanticist 
would have made him think it prudish to discard, while the 
deep, underlying elements of his nature made it inconceivable 
that he should indulge. Only in later years did he heal his 
wound in a happy married life. 

The episode was typical of the experience he was passing 
through. He understood the pubUc with which his first book 
dealt. That book bears the striking title, Reden ilber die 
Religion, an die Gehildeten unter ihren Verdchtern (translated, 
Oman, Oxford, 1893). His pubUc understood him. He could 
reach them as perhaps no other man could do. If he had ever 
concealed what religion was to him, he now paid the price. 
If they had made light of him, he now made war on them. 
This meed they could hardly withhold from him, that he 
understood most other things quite as well as they, and 
religion much better than they. The rhetorical form is a 
fiction. The addresses were never delivered. Their tension 
and straining after effect is palpable. They are a cry of pain 
on the part of one who sees that assailed which is sacred to 
him, of triumph as he feels himself able to repel the assault, 
of brooding persuasiveness lest any should fail to be won for 
his truth. He concedes everything. It is part of his art to 
go further than his detractors. He is so well versed in his 
subject that he can do that with consummate mastery, 
where they are clumsy or dilettante. It is but a pale ghost 
of religion that he has left. But he has attained his purpose. 
He has vindicated the place of religion in the life of culture. 



in.] THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 77 

He has shown the relation of reUgion to every great thing 
in civiUsation, its affinity with art, its common quahty with 
poetry, its identity with all profound activities of the soul. 
These all are religion, though their votaries know it not. These 
are reverence for the highest, dependence on the highest, self- 
surrender to the highest. No great man ever lived, no great 
work was ever done, save in an attitude toward the universe, 
which is identical with that of the religious man toward God. 
The universe is God. God is the universe. That religionists 
have obscured this simple truth and denied this grand relation 
is true, and nothing to the point. The cultivated should be 
ashamed not to know this. Then, with a sympathy with 
institutional religion and a knowledge of history in which 
he stood almost alone, he retracts much that he has yielded, 
he rebuilds much that he has thrown down, proclaims much 
which they must now concede. The book was pubUshed in 
1799. Twenty years later he said sadly that if he were re- 
writing it, its shafts would be directed against some very 
different persons, against glib and smug people who boasted 
the form of godliness, conventional, even fashionable religion- 
ists and loveless ecclesiastics. Vast and various influences 
in the Germany of the first two decades of the century had 
wrought for the revival of religion. Of those influences, not 
the least had been that of Schleiermacher's book. Among 
the greatest had been Schleiermacher himself. 

The religion of feeling, as advocated in the Reden, had left 
much on the ethical side to be desired. This defect the 
author sought to remedy in his Monologen, published in 1800. 
The programme of theological studies for the new University 
of Berlin, Kurze Darstellung des Theologischen Studiums, 1811, 
shows his theological system already in large part matured. 
His Der christliche Glaube, published in 1821, revised three 
years before his death in 1834, is his monumental work. His 
Ethik, his lectures upon many subjects, numerous volumes of 
sermons, all published after his death, witness his versatiUty. 
His sermons have the rare note which one finds in Robertson 
and Brooks. 

All of the immediacy of religion, its independence of rational 



78 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

argument, of historical tradition or institutional forms, which 
was characteristic of Schleiermacher to his latest day, is 
felt in the Reden. By it he thrilled the hearts of men as they 
have rarely been thrilled. It is not forms and traditions which 
create religion. It is religion which creates these. They 
cannot exist without it. It may exist without them, though 
not so well or so efifectively. Religion is the sense of God. 
That sense we have, though many call it by another name. 
It would be more true to say that that sense has us. It is 
inescapable. All who have it are the religious. Those who 
hold to dogmas, rites, institutions in such a way as to obscure 
and overlay this sense of God, those who hold these as substi- 
tute for that sense, are the nearest to being irreligious. Any 
form, the most outri, bizarre and unconventional, is good, 
so only that it helps a man to God. All forms are evil, the 
most accredited the most evil, if they come between a man 
and God. The pantheism of the thought of God in all of 
Schleiermacher's early work is undeniable. He never wholly 
put it aside. The personahty of God seemed to him a limita- 
tion. Language is here only symbolical, a mere expression 
from an environment which we know, flung out into the 
depths of that we cannot see. If the language of personal 
relations helps men in living with their truth — well and 
good. It hinders also. For himself he felt that it hindered 
more than helped. His definition of religion as the feeling 
of dependence upon God, is cited as evidence of the effect 
upon him of his contention against the personalness of God. 
Religion is also, it is alleged, the sentiment of fellowship 
with God. Fellowship implies persons. But to no man was 
the fellowship with the soul of his own soul and of all the 
universe more real than was that fellowship to Schleier- 
macher. This was the more true in his maturer years, the 
years of the magnificent rounding out of his thought. God 
was to him indeed not ' a man in the next street.' What 
he says about the problem of the personalness of God is 
true. We see, perhaps, more clearly than did he that the 
debate is largely about words. Similarly, we may say that 
Schleiermacher's passing denial of the immortality of the 



m.] THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 79 

soul was directed, in the first instance, against the crass, 
unsocial and immoral view which has disfigured much of the 
teaching of religion. His contention was directed toward 
that losing of oneself in God through ideals and service now, 
which in more modern phrase we call the entrance upon the 
immortal life here, the being in eternity now. For a soul so 
disposed, for a life thus inspired, death is but an episode. 
For himself he rejoices to declare it one to the issue of which 
he is indifferent. If he may thus live with God now, he cares 
little whether or not he shall live by and by. 

In his Monologues Schleiermacher first sets forth his ethical 
thought. As it is religion that a man feels himself dependent 
upon God, so is it the beginning of morality that a man feels 
his dependence upon his fellows and their dependence on him. 
Slaves of their own time and circumstance, men live out their 
lives in superficiality and isolation. They are a prey to their 
own selfishness. They never come into those relations with their 
fellows in which the moral ideal can be realised. Man in his 
isolation from his fellows is nothing and accomplishes nothing. 
The interests of the whole humanity are his private interests. 
His own happiness and welfare are not possible to be secured 
save through his co-operation with others, his work and 
service for others. The happiness and welfare of others not 
merely react upon his own. They are in a large sense identical 
with his own. This oneness of a man ynih. all men is the basis 
of morality, just as the oneness of man with God is the basis 
of religion. In both cases the oneness exists whether or not 
we know it. The contradictions and miseries into which im- 
moral or unmoral conduct plunges us, are the witness of the 
fact that this inviolable unity of a man with humanity is 
operative, even if he ignores it. Often it is his ignoring of this 
relation which brings him through misery to consciousness 
of it. Man as moral being is but an individuation of humanity, 
just as, again, as religious being he is but an individuation of 
God. The goal of the moral Ufe is the absorption of self, 
the elimination of self, which is at the same time the realisation 
of self, through the life and service for others. The goal of 
religion is the elimination of self, the swallowing up of self, in 



80 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

the service of God. In truth, the unity of man with man is 
at bottom only another form of his unity with God, and the 
service of humanity is the identical service of God. Other 
so-called services of God are a means to this, or else an illusion. 
This parallel of religion and morals is to be set over against 
other passages, easily to be cited, in which Schleiermacher 
speaks of passivity and contemplation as the means of the 
reahsation of the unity of man and God, as if the ehmina- 
tion of self meant a sort of Nirvana. Schleiermacher was 
a pantheist and mystic. No philosopher save Kant ever 
influenced him half so much as did Spinoza. There is 
something almost oriental in his mood at times. An occa- 
sional fragment of description of rehgion might pass as 
a better delineation of Buddhism than of Christianity. 
This universahty of his mind is interesting. These elements 
have not been unattractive to some portions of his follow- 
ing. One wearied with the Philistinism of the modern 
popular urgency upon practicality turns to Schleiermacher, 
as indeed sometimes to Spinoza, and says, here is a man 
who at least knows what religion is. Yet nothing is further 
from the truth than to say that Schleiermacher had no 
sense for the meaning of religion in the outward life and 
present world. 

In the Eeden Schleiermacher had contended that rehgion 
is a condition of devout feeling, specifically the feeling of 
dependence upon God. This view dominates his treatment 
of Christianity. It gives him his point of departure. A 
Christian is possessed of the devout feeling of dependence 
upon God through Jesus Christ or, as again he phrases it, of 
dependence upon Christ. Christianity is a positive religion 
in the sense that it has direct relation to certain facts in the 
history of the race, most of all to the person of Jesus of 
Nazareth. But it does not consist in any positive propositions 
whatsoever. These have arisen in the process of interpre- 
tation of the faith. The substance of the faith is the ex- 
perience of renewal in Christ, of redemption through Christ. 
This inward experience is neither produced by pure thought 
nor dependent upon it. Like all other experience it is simply 



m.] THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 81 

an object to be described and reckoned with. Orthodox 
dogmatists had held that the content of the Christian 
faith is a doctrine given in revelation. Schleiermacher held 
that it is a consciousness inspired primarily by the per- 
sonality of Jesus. It must be connected with the other data 
and acta of our consciousness under the general laws of the 
operation of the mind. Against rationalism and much so- 
called liberal Christianity, Schleiermacher contended that 
Christianity is not a new set of propositions periodically 
brought up to date and proclaimed as if these alone were 
true. New propositions can have only the same relativity 
of truth which belonged to the old ones in their day. They 
may stand between men and religion as seriously as the others 
had done. 

The condition of the heart, which is religion, the experience 
through Jesus which is Christianity, is primarily an indi- 
vidual matter. But it is not solely such. It is a common ex- 
perience also. Schleiermacher recognises the common element 
in the Christian consciousness, the element which shows 
itself in the Christian experience of all ages, of different races 
and of countless numbers of men. By this recognition of the 
Christian Church in its deep and spiritual sense, Schleier- 
macher hopes to escape the vagaries and eccentricities, and 
again the narrowness and bigotries of pure individualism. 
No liberal theologian until Schleiermacher had had any 
similar sense of the meaning of the Christian Church, and of 
the privilege and duty of Christian thought to contribute to 
the welfare of that body of men believing in God and following 
Christ which is meant by the Church. This is in marked 
contrast with the individualism of Kant. Of course, Schleier- 
macher would never have recognised as the Church that part 
of humanity which is held together by adherence to particular 
dogmas, since, for him, Christianity is not dogma. Still less 
could he recognise as the Church that part of mankind which 
is held together by a common tradition of worship, or by a 
given theory of organisation, since these also are historical 
and incidental. He meant by the Church that part of 
humanity, in all places and at all times, which has been held 

F 



82 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

together by the common possession of the Christian con- 
sciousness and the Christian experience. The outUne of this 
experience, the content of this consciousness, can never be so 
defined as to make it legislatively operative. If it were so 
defined we should have dogma and not Christianity. Never- 
theless, it may be practically potent. The degree in which 
a given man may justly identify his own consciousness and 
experience with that of the Christian world is problematical. 
In Schleiermacher's own case, the identification of some of 
his contentions — as, for example, the thought that God is 
not personal — with the great Christian consciousness of the 
past, is more than problematical. To this Schleiermacher 
would reply that if these contentions were true, they would 
become the possession of spiritual Christendom with the 
lapse of time. Advance always originates with one or a few. 
If, however, in the end, a given position found no place 
in the consciousness of generations truly evidencing their 
Christian life, that position would be adjudged an idiosyn- 
crasy, a negUgible quantity. This view of Schleiermacher's 
as to the Church is suggestive. It is the undertone of a view 
which widely prevails in our own time. It is somewhat 
difficult of practical combination wdth the traditional marks 
of the churches, as these have been inherited even in Pro- 
testantism from the Cathohc age. 

In a very real sense Jesus occupied the central place in 
Schleiermacher's system. This centralness of Jesus Christ 
he himself was never weary of emphasising. It became in 
the next generation a favourite phrase of some who followed 
Schleiermacher's pure and luminous spirit afar off. Too 
much of a mystic to assert that it is through Jesus alone that 
we know God, he yet accords to Jesus an absolutely unique 
place in revelation. It is through the character and per- 
sonality of Jesus that the change in the character of man, 
which is redemption, is inaugurated and sustained. Re- 
demption is a man's being brought out of the condition in 
which all higher self -consciousness was dimmed and enfeebled, 
into one in which this higher consciousness is vivid and strong 
and the power of self-determination toward the good has been 



in.l THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 83 

restored. Salvation is thus moral and spiritual, present as 
well as future. It is possible in the future only because 
actual in the present. It is the reconstruction of a man's 
nature and life by the action of the spirit of God, conjointly 
with that of man's own free spirit. 

It is intelligible in Schleiermacher's context that Jesus 
should be spoken of as the sole redeemer of men, their only 
hope, and that the Christian's dependence upon him should be 
described as absolute. As a matter of fact, however, the 
idea of dependence upon Christ alone has been often, indeed, 
one may say generally, associated with a conception of sal- 
vation widely different from that of Schleiermacher. It has 
been oftenest associated with the notion of something purely 
external, forensic, even magical. It is connected, even down 
to our own time, with reliance upon the blood of Christ, 
almost as if this were externally applied. It has postulated 
a propitiatory sacrifice, a vicarious atonement, a completed 
transaction, something which was laid up for all and waiting 
to be availed of by some. Now every external, forensic, 
magical notion of salvation, as something purchased for us, 
imputed to us, conferred upon us, would have been utterly 
impossible to Schleiermacher. It is within the soul of man 
that redemption takes place. Conferment from the side of 
God and Christ, or from God through Christ, can be nothing 
more, as also it can be nothing less, than the imparting of 
wisdom and grace and spiritual power from the personality 
of Jesus, which a man then freely takes up within himself 
and gives forth as from himself. The Christian consciousness 
contains, along with the sense of dependence upon Jesus, the 
sense of moral alliance and spiritual sympathy with him, of 
a free relation of the will of man to the will of God as revealed 
in Jesus. The will of man is set upon the reproduction 
within himself, so far as possible, of the consciousness, ex- 
perience and character of Jesus. 

The sin from which man is to be delivered is described by 
Schleiermacher thus : It is the dominance of the lower nature 
in us, of the sense-consciousness. It is the determination of 
our course of Ufe by the senses. This preponderance of the 



84 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

senses over the consciousness of God is the secret of un- 
happiness, of the feeling of defeat and misery in men, of the 
need of salvation. One has to read Schleiermacher's phrase, 
' the senses ' here, as we read Paul's phrase, * the flesh.' On the 
other hand, the preponderance of the consciousness of God, 
the willing obedience to it in every act of Ufe, becomes to us 
the secret of strength and of blessedness in life. This is the 
special experience of the Christian. It is the effect of the 
impulse and influence of Christ. We receive this impulse in 
a manner wholly consistent with the laws of our psychological 
and moral being. We carry forward this impulse with vary- 
ing fortunes and by free will. It comes to us, however, from 
without and from above, through one who was indeed true 
man, but who is also, in a manner not further explicable, to 
be identified with the moral ideal of humanity. This identi- 
fication of Jesus with the moral ideal is complete and un- 
questioning with Schleiermacher. It is visible in the inter- 
changeable use of the titles Jesus and Christ. Our saving 
consciousness of God could proceed from the person of Jesus 
only if that consciousness were actually present in Jesus 
in an absolute measure. Ideal and person in him perfectly 
coincide. 

As typical and ideal man, according to Schleiermacher, 
Jesus was distinguished from all other foimders of rehgions. 
These come before us as men chosen from the number of 
their fellows, receiving, quite as much for themselves as for 
others, that which they received from God. It is nowhere 
implied that Jesus himself was in need of redemption, but 
rather that he alone possessed from earliest years the fulness 
of redemptive power. He was distinguished from other men 
by his absolute moral perfection. This excluded not merely 
actual sin, but all possibility of sin and, accordingly, all real 
moral struggle. This perfection was characterised also by 
his freedom from error. He never originated an erroneous 
notion nor adopted one from others as a conviction of his 
own. In this respect his person was a moral miracle in the 
midst of the common life of our humanity, of an order to 
be explained only by a new spiritually creative act of God. 



in.] THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 86 

On the other hand, Schleiermacher says squarely that the 
absence of the natural paternal participation in the origin 
of the physical life of Jesus, according to the account in the 
first and third Gospels, would add nothing to the moral 
miracle if it could be proved and detract nothing if it 
should be taken away. Singular is this ability on the part of 
Schleiermacher to believe in the moral miracle, not upon its 
own terms, of which we shall speak later, but upon terms 
upon which the outward and physical miracle, commonly 
so-called, had become, we need not say incredible, but un- 
necessary to Schleiermacher himself. Singular is this whole 
part of Schleiermacher's construction, with its lapse into 
abstraction of the familiar sort, of which, in general, the work- 
ing of his mind had been so free. For surely what we here 
have is abstraction. It is an undissolved fragment of meta- 
physical theology. It is impossible of combination with the 
historical. It is wholly unnecessary for the religious view 
of salvation which Schleiermacher had distinctly taken. It 
is surprising how slow men have been to learn that the 
absolute cannot be historic nor the historic absolute. 

Surely the claim that Jesus was free from error in intellectual 
conception is unnecessary, from the point of view of the saving 
influence upon character which Schleiermacher had asserted. 
It is in contradiction with the view of revelation to which 
Schleiermacher had already advanced. It is to be accounted 
for only from the point of view of the mistaken assumption 
that the divine, even in manifestation, must be perfect, in the 
sense of that which is static and not of that which is dynamic. 
The assertion is not sustained from the Gospel itself. It 
reduces many aspects of the life of Jesus to mere semblance. 
That also which is claimed in regard to the abstract impossi- 
bility of sin upon the part of Jesus is in hopeless contradiction 
with that which Schleiermacher had said as to the normal and 
actual development of Jesus, in moral as also in all other ways. 
Such development is impossible without struggle. Struggle 
is not real when failure is impossible. So far as we know, it 
is in struggle only that character is made. Even as to the 
actual commission of sin on Jesus' part, the assertion of the 



86 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

abstract necessity of his sinlessness, for the work of moral 
redemption, goes beyond anything which we know. The 
question of the sinlessness of Jesus is not an a priori question. 
To say that he was by conception free from sin is to beg the 
question. We thus form a conception and then read the 
Gospels to find evidence to sustain it. To say that he did, 
though tempted in all points like as we are, yet so conduct 
himself in the mystery of life as to remain unstained, is indeed 
to allege that he achieved that which, so far as we know, is 
without parallel in the history of the race. But it is to leave 
him true man, and so the moral redeemer of men who would 
be true. To say that, if he were true man, he must have 
sinned, is again to beg the question. Let us repeat that the 
question is one of evidence. To say that he was, though true 
man, so far as we have any evidence in fact, free from sin, is 
only to say that his humanity was uniquely penetrated by 
the spirit of God for the purposes of the life which he had to 
live. That heart-broken recollection of his own sin which 
one hears in The Scarlet Letter, giving power to the preacher 
who would reach men in their sins, has not the remotest 
parallel in any reminiscence of Jesus which we possess. There 
is every evidence of the purity of Jesus' consciousness. There 
is no evidence of the consciousness of sin. There is a passage 
in the Discourses, in which Schleiermacher himself declared 
that the identification of the fundamental idea of religion 
with the historical fact in which that religion had its rise, 
was a mistake. Surely it is exactly this mistake which 
Schleiermacher has here made. 

It will be evident from all that has been said that to 
Schleiermacher the Scripture was not the foundation of faith. 
As such it was almost universally regarded in his time. The 
New Testament, he declared, is itself but a product of the 
Christian consciousness. It is a record of the Christian 
experience of the men of the earlier time. To us it is a means 
of grace because it is the vivid and original register of that 
experience. The Scriptures can be regarded as the work of 
the Holy Spirit only in so far as this was this common spirit 
of the early Church. This spirit has borne witness to Christ 



III.] THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 87 

in these writings not essentially otherwise than in later writ- 
ings, only more at first hand, more under the impression of 
intercourse with Jesus. Least of all may we base the authority 
of Scripture upon a theory of inspiration such as that gener- 
ally current in Schleiermacher's time. It is the personality 
of Jesus which is the inspiration of the New Testament. 
Christian faith, including the faith in the Scriptures, can rest 
only upon the total impression of the character of Jesus. 

In the same manner Schleiermacher speaks of miracles. 
These cannot be regarded in the conventional manner as 
supports of religion, for the simplest of all reasons. They 
presuppose religion and faith and must be understood by 
means of these. The accounts of external miracles contained 
in the Gospels are matters for unhesitating criticism. The 
Christian finds, for moral reasons and because of the response 
of his own heart, the highest revelation of God in Jesus Christ. 
Extraordinary events may be expected in Jesus' career. Yet 
these can be called miracles only relatively, as containing 
something extraordinary for contemporary knowledge. They 
may remain to us events wholly inexplicable, illustrating a 
law higher than any which we yet know. Therewith they are 
not taken out of the realm of the orderly phenomena of nature. 
In other words, the notion of the miraculous is purely sub- 
jective. What is a miracle for one age may be no miracle in 
the view of the next. Whatever the deeds of Jesus may have 
been, however inexplicable all ages may find them, we can 
but regard them as merely natural consequences of the per- 
sonality of Jesus, unique because he was unique. ' In the 
interests of religion the necessity can never arise of regarding 
an event as taken out of its connection with nature, in conse- 
quence of its dependence upon God.' 



It is not possible within the compass of this book to do more 
than deal with typical and representative persons. Schleier- 
macher was epoch-making. He gathered in himself the 



88 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

creative impulses of the preceding period. The characteristic 
theological tendencies of the two succeeding generations may 
be traced back to him. Many men worked in seriousness upon 
the theological problem. No one of them marks an era again, 
until we come to Ritschl. The theologians of the interval 
between Schleiermacher and Ritschl have been divided into 
three groups. The first group is of distinctly philosophical 
tendency. The influence of Hegel was felt upon them all. 
To this group belong Schweitzer, Biedermann, Lipsius, and 
Pfleiderer. The influence of Hegel was greatest upon Bieder- 
mann, least upon Lipsius. An estimate of the influence of 
Schleiermacher would reverse that order. Especially did 
Lipsius seek to lay at the foundation of his work that exact 
psychological study of the phenomena of religion which 
Schleiermacher had declared requisite. It is possible that 
Lipsius will more nearly come to his own when the enthusiasm 
for Ritschl has waned. The second group of Schleiermacher's 
followers took the direction opposite to that which we have 
named. They were the confessional theologians. Hoffmann 
shows himself learned, acute and full of power. One does 
not see, however, why his method should not prove anything 
which any confession ever claimed. He sets out from 
Schleiermacher's declaration concerning the content of the 
Christian consciousness. In Hoffmann's own devout con- 
sciousness there had been response, since his childhood, to every 
item which the creed alleged. Therefore these items must 
have objective truth. One is reminded of an English parallel 
in Newman's Grammar of Assent, Yet another group, that 
of the so-called mediating theologians, contains some well- 
known names. Here belong Nitzsch, Rothe, Miiller, Domer. 
The name had originally described the effort to find, in the 
Union, common ground between Lutherans and Reformed. 
In the fact that it made the creeds of Httle importance 
and fell back on Schleiermacher's emphasis upon feeling, the 
movement came to have the character also of an attempt to 
find a middle way between confessionahsts and rationalists. 
Its representatives had often the kind of breadth of sympathy 
which goes with lack of insight, rather than that breadth of 



m.] THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 89 

sympathy which is due to the possession of insight. Yet 
Rothe rises to real distinction, especially in his forecast of the 
social interpretation of religion. With the men of this group 
arose a speculation concerning the person of Christ which 
for a time had some currency. It was called the theory of 
the kenosis. Jesus is spoken of in a famous passage of the 
letter to the Philippians, as having emptied himself of divine 
qualities that he might be found in fashion as a man. In 
this speculation the divine attributes were divided into two 
classes. Of the one class it was held Christ had emptied 
himself in becoming flesh, or at least he had them in abeyance. 
He had them, but did not use them. What we have here is 
but a despairing effort to be just to Jesus' humanity and 
yet to assert his deity in the ancient metaphysical terms. It 
is but saying yes and no in the same breath. Biedermann 
said sadly of the speculation that it represented the kenosis, 
not of the divine nature, but of the human understanding. 

RiTSCHL AND THE RiTSCHLIANS 

If any man in the department of theology in the latter half 
of the nineteenth century attained a position such as to entitle 
him to be compared with Schleiermacher, it was Ritschl. He 
was long the most conspicuous figure in any chair of dogmatic 
theology in Germany. He established a school of theological 
thinkers in a sense in which Schleiermacher never desired to 
gain a following. He exerted ecclesiastical influence of a kind 
which Schleiermacher never sought. He was involved in 
controversy in a degree to which the life of Schleiermacher 
presents no parallel. He was not a preacher, he was no philo- 
sopher. He was not a man of Schleiermacher's breadth of 
interest. His intellectual history presents more than one 
breach within itself, as that of Schleiermacher presented 
none, despite the wide arc which he traversed. Of Ritschl, 
as of Schleiermacher, it may be said that he exerted a 
great influence over many who have only in part agreed 
-v^dth him. 

Albrecht Ritschl was bom in 1822 in Berlin, the son of a 



90 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

bishop in the Lutheran Church. He was educated at Bonn 
and at Tubingen. He estabUshed himself at Bonn, where, 
in 1853, he became professor extraordinarius and in 1860 
ordinarius. In 1864 he was called to Gottingen. In 1874 he 
became consistorialrath in the new Prussian estabhshment 
for the Hanoverian Church. He died in 1888. These are 
the simple outward facts of a somewhat stormy professional 
career. There was pietistic influence in Ritschl's ancestry, 
as also in Schleiermacher's. Ritschl had, however, reacted 
violently against it. His attitude was that of repudiation of 
everything mystical. He had strong aversion to the type 
of piety which rested its assurance solely upon inward ex- 
perience. This aversion is one root of the historic positivism 
which makes him, at the last, assert the worthlessness of all 
supposed revelations outside of the Bible and of all supposed 
Christian experience apart from the influence of the historical 
Christ. He began his career under the influence of Hegel. 
He came to the position in which he felt that the sole hope 
for theology was in the ehmination from it of all metaphysical 
elements. He felt that none of his predecessors had carried 
out Schleiermacher's dictum, that religion is not thought, 
but religious thought only one of the functions of religion. 
Yet, of course, he was not able to discuss fimdamental theo- 
logical questions without philosophical basis, particularly an 
expUcit theory of knowledge. His theory of knowledge he 
had derived eclectically and somewhat eccentrically, from 
Lotze and Kant. To this day not all, either of his friends 
or foes, are quite certain what it was. It is open to doubt 
whether Ritschl really arrived at his theory of cognition 
and then made it one of the bases of his theology. It is con- 
ceivable that he made his theology and then propounded 
his theory of cognition in its defence. In a word, the basis 
of distinction between rehgious and scientific knowledge is 
not to be sought in its object. It is to be found in the sphere 
of the subject, in the difference of attitude of the subject 
toward the object. Religion is concerned with what he calls 
Werthurtheile, judgments of value, considerations of our 
relation to the world, which are of moment solely in accord- 



m.] THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 91 

ance with their value in awakening feelings of pleasure or of 
pain. The thought of God, for example, must be treated 
solely as a judgment of value. It is a conception which is 
of worth for the attainment of good, for our spiritual peace 
and victory over the world. What God is in himself we 
cannot know, an existential judgment we cannot form without 
going over to the metaphysicians. What God is to us we 
can know simply as religious men and solely upon the basis 
of religious experience. God is holy love. That is a religious 
value-judgment. But what sort of a being God must be 
in order that we may assign to him these attributes, we 
cannot say without leaving the basis of experience. This 
is pragmatism indeed. It opens up boundless possibilities 
of subjectivism in a man who was apparently only too 
matter-of-fact. 

There was a time in his career when Ritschl was popular 
with both conservatives and liberals. There were long 
years in which he was bitterly denounced by both. Yet 
there was something in the man and in his teaching which 
went beyond all the antagonisms of the schools. There can 
be no doubt that it was the intention of Ritschl to build his 
theology solely upon the gospel of Jesus Christ. The joy 
and confidence with which this theology could be preached, 
Ritschl awakened in his pupils in a degree which had not 
been equalled by any theologian since Schleiermacher himself. 
Numbers who, in the time of philosophical and scientific un- 
certainty, had lost their courage, regained it in contact with 
his confident and deeply religious spirit. A wholesome 
nature, eminently objective in temper, concentrated with all 
his force upon his task, of rare dialectical gifts, he had a great 
sense of humour and occasionally also the faculty of bitterly 
sarcastic speech. His very figure radiated the delight of 
conflict as he walked the Gottingen wall. 

A devoted pupil, writing immediately after Ritschl's death, 
used concerning Schleiermacher a phrase which we may 
transfer to Ritschl himself. ' One wonders whether such a 
theology ever existed as a connected whole, except in the mind 
of its originator. Neither by those about him, nor by those 



92 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch, 

after him, has it been reproduced in its entirety or free from 
glaring contradictions.' It was not free from contradictions 
in Ritschl's own mind. His pupils divided his inheritance 
among them. Each appropriated that which accorded with 
his own way of looking at things and viewed the remainder 
as something which might be left out of the account. It is 
long since one could properly speak of a Ritschlian school. 
It will be long until we shall cease to reckon with a RitschHan 
influence. He did yeoman service in breaking down the high 
Lutheran confessionalism which had been the order of the 
day. In his recognition of the excesses of the Tiibingen 
school all would now agree. In his feeling against mere 
sentimentalities of piety many sympathise. In his emphasis 
upon the ethical and practical, in his urgency upon the actual 
problem of a man's vocation in the world, he meets in striking 
manner the temper of our age. In his emphasis upon the 
social factor in religion, he represents a popular phase of 
thought. With all of this, it is strange to find a man of so 
much learning who had so Httle sympathy with the com- 
parative study of rehgions, who was such a dogmatist on 
behalf of his own inadequate notion of revelation, the logical 
effect of whose teaching concerning the Church would be the 
revival of an institutionalism and extemaUsm such as Pro- 
testantism has hardly known. 

Since Schleiermacher the German theologians had made 
the problem of the person of Christ the centre of discussion. 
In the same period the problem of the person of Christ had 
been the central point of debate in America. Here, as there, 
all the other points arranged themselves about this one. 
The new movement which went out from Ritschl took as its 
centre the work of Christ in redemption. This is obvious 
from the very title of Ritschl's great book. Die Christliche 
Lehre von der Bechtfertigung und Versohnung, Of this work the 
first edition of the third and significant volume was published 
in 1874. Before that time the formal treatises on theology had 
followed a traditional order of topics. It had been assumed 
as self-evident that one should speak of a person before 
one talked of his work. It did not occur to the theologians 



ni.] THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 93 

that in the case of the divine person, at all events, we can 
securely say that we know something as to his work. Much 
concerning his person must remain a mystery to us, exactly 
because he is divine. Our safest course, therefore, would be 
to infer the unknown qualities of his person from the known 
traits of his work. Certainly this would be true as to the 
work of God in nature. This was not the way, however, in 
which the minds of theologians worked. The habit of deal- 
ing with conceptions as if they were facts had too deep 
hold upon them. So long as men believed in revelation as 
giving them, not primarily God and the transcendental 
world itself, but information about God and the transcen- 
dental, they naturally held that they knew as much of the 
persons of God and Christ as of their works. 

Schleiermacher had opened men's eyes to the fact that the 
great work of Christ in redemption is an inward one, an 
ethical and spiritual work, the transformation of character. 
He had said, not merely that the transformation of man's 
character follows upon the work of redemption. It is the 
work of redemption. The primary witness to the work of 
Christ is, therefore, in the facts of consciousness and history. 
These are capable of empirical scrutiny. They demand 
psychological investigation. When thus investigated they 
yield our primary material for any assertion we may make 
concerning God. Above all, it is the nature of Jesus, as 
learned on the evidence of his work in the hearts of men, 
which is our great revelation and source of inference concern- 
ing the nature of God. Instead of saying in the famous 
phrase, that the Christians think of Christ as God, we say that 
we are able to think of God, as a religious magnitude, in no 
other terms than in those of his manifestation and redemptive 
activity in Jesus. 

None since Kant, except extreme confessionaUsts, and 
these in diminishing degree, have held that the great effect 
of the work of Christ was upon the mind and attitude of God. 
Less and less have men thought of justification as forensic 
and judicial, a declaring sinners righteous in the eye of the 
divine law, the attribution of Christ's righteousness to men, 



94 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

so far at least as to relieve these last of penalty. This was the 
Anselmic scheme. Indeed, it had been TertuUian's. Less 
and less have men thought of reconciliation as that of an 
angry God to men, more and more as of alienated men with 
God. The phrases of the orthodoxy of the seventeenth 
century, Lutheran as well as Calvinistic, survive. More and 
more new meaning, not always consistent, is injected into 
them. No one would deny that the loftiest moral enthusiasm, 
the noblest sense of duty, animated the hearts of many who 
thought in the terms of Calvinism. The delineation of God 
as unreconciled, of the work and sufferings of Christ as a 
substitution, of salvation as a conferment, caused gratitude, 
tender devotion, heroic allegiance in some. It worked re- 
vulsion in others. It was protested against most radically by 
Kant, as indeed it had been condemned by many before him. 
For Kant the renovation of character was the essential sal- 
vation. Yet the development of his doctrine was deficient 
through the individualistic form which it took. Salvation 
was essentially a change in the individual mind, brought 
about through the practical reason, and having its ideal in 
Jesus. Yet for Kant our salvation had no closer relation 
to the historic revelation in Jesus. Furthermore, so much 
was this change an individual issue that we may say that the 
actualisation of redemption would be the same for a given 
man, were he the only man in the universe. To hold fast to 
the ethical ideahsm of Kant, and to overcome its subjectivity 
and individuaUsm, was the problem. 

The reference to experience which underlies all that was 
said above was particularly congruous with the mood of an 
age grown weary of Hegelianism and much impressed with 
the value of the empirical method in all the sciences. An- 
other great contention of our age is for the recognition of the 
value of what is social. Its emphasis is upon that which 
binds men together. Salvation is not normally achieved 
except in the life of a man among and for his fellows. It is 
by doing one's duty that one becomes good. One is saved, 
not in order to become a citizen of heaven by and by, but in 
order to be an active citizen of a kingdom of real human 



ni.] THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 96 

goodness here and now. In reality no man is being saved, 
except as he does actively and devotedly belong to that 
kingdom. The individual would hardly be in God's eyes 
worth the saving, except in order that he might be the instru- 
mentality of the realisation of the kingdom. These are ideas 
which it is possible to exaggerate in statement or, at least, 
to set forth in all the isolation of their quality as half-truths. 
But it is hardly possible to exaggerate their significance as 
a reversal of the immemorial one-sidedness, inadequacy, and 
artificiality both of the official statement and of the popular 
apprehension of Christianity. These ideas appeal to men in 
our time. They are popular because men think them already. 
Men are pleased, even when somewhat incredulous, to learn 
that Christianity will bear this social interpretation. Most 
Christians are in our time overwhelmingly convinced that 
in this direction lies the interpretation which Christianity 
must bear, if it is to do the work and meet the needs of the 
age. Its consonance with some of the truths underlying 
socialism may account, in a measure, for the influence which 
the Ritschlian theology has had. 

As was indicated, Ritschl's epoch-making book bears the 
title. The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation. 
The book might be described in the language of the schools 
as a monograph upon one great dogma of the Christian 
faith, around which, as the author treats it, all the other 
doctrines are arranged. The familiar topic of justification, 
of which Luther made so much, was thus given again the 
central place. What the book really offered was something 
quite different from this. It was a complete system of theo- 
logy, but it differed from the traditional systems of theology. 
These had followed helplessly a logical scheme which begins 
with God as he is in himself and apart from any knowledge 
which we have of him. They then slowly proceeded to man 
and sin and redemption, one empirical object and two concrete 
experiences which we may know something about. Ritschl 
reversed the process. He aimed to begin with certain facts of 
life. Such facts are sin and the consciousness of forgiveness, 
awareness of restoration to the will and power of goodness, 



96 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KAN^T [ch. 

the gift of love and of a spirit which can feel itself victorious 
even in the midst of ills in life, confidence that this life 
is not all. These phrases, taken together, would describe 
the consciousness of salvation. This consciousness of sin 
and salvation is a fact in individual men. It has evidently 
been a fact in the life of masses of men for many generations. 
The facts have thus a psychology and a history from which 
reflection on the phenomenon of faith must take its departure. 
There is no reason why, upon this basis, and until it departs 
from the scientific methods which are given with the nature 
of its object, theology should not be as truly a science as is 
any other known among men. 

This science starts with man, who is the object of many 
other sciences. It confines itself to man in this one aspect of 
his relation to moral life and to the transcendent meaning of 
the universe. It notes the fact that men, when awakened, 
usually have the sense of not being in harmony with the hfe 
of the universe or on the way to realisation of its meaning. 
It notes the fact that many men have had the consciousness 
of progressive restoration to that harmony. It inquires as to 
the process of that restoration. It asks as to the power of it. 
It discovers that that power is a personal one. Men have 
believed that this power has been exerted over them, either 
in personal contact, or across the ages and through genera- 
tions of believers, by one Jesus, whom they call Saviour. 
They have believed that it was God who through Jesus 
saved them. Jesus' consciousness thus became to them a 
revelation of God. The thought leads on to the considera- 
tion of that which a saved man does, or ought to do, in the 
life of the world and among his fellows, of the institution 
in which this attitude of mind is cherished and of the sum 
total of human institutions and relations of which the saved 
hfe should be the inward force. There is room even for 
a clause in which to compress the little that we know of any- 
thing beyond this life. We have written in unconventional 
words. There is no one place, either in Ritschl's work 
or elsewhere, where this grand and simple scheme stands 
together in one context. This is unfortunate. Were this 



ra.] THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 97 

the case, even wayfaring men might have understood some- 
what better than they have what Ritschl was aiming at. 

It is a still greater pity that the execution of the scheme 
should have left so much to be desired. That this execution 
would prove difficult needs hardly to be said. That it could 
never be the work of one man is certainly true. To have had 
so great an insight is title enough to fame. Ritschl falls off 
from his endeavour as often as did Schleiermacher — more often 
and with less excuse. The might of the past is great. The 
lumber which he meekly carries along with him is surprising, 
as one feels his lack of meekness in the handling of the lumber 
which he recognised as such. The putting of new wine into 
old bottles is so often reprobated by Ritschl that the reader 
is justly surprised when he nevertheless recognises the bottles. 
The system is not ' all of one piece ' — distinctly not. There 
are places where the rent is certainly made worse by the old 
cloth on the new garment. The work taken as a whole is 
so bewildering that one finds himself asking, ' What is Ritschl's 
method ? ' If what is meant is not a question of detail, but 
of the total apprehension of the problem to be solved, the 
apprehension which we strove to outline above, then Ritschl's 
courageous and complete inversion of the ancient method, 
his demand that we proceed from the known to the unknown, 
is a contribution so great that all shortcomings in the execu- 
tion of it are insignificant. His first volume deals with the 
history of the doctrine of justification, beginning with Anselm 
and Abelard. In it Ritschl's eminent qualities as historian 
come out. In it also his prejudices have their play. The 
second volume deals with the Biblical foundations for the 
doctrine. Ritschl was bred in the Tiibingen school. Yet 
here is much forced exegesis. Ritschl's positivistic view of 
the Scripture and of the whole question of revelation, was 
not congruous with his well-learned biblical criticism. The 
third volume is the constructive one. It is of immeasur- 
ably greater value than the other two. It is this third 
volume which has frequently been translated. 

In respect of his contention against metaphysics it is hardly 
necessary that we should go into detail. With his empirical 

G 



98 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

and psychological point of departure, given above, most men 
will find themselves in entire sympathy. The confusion of 
religion, which is an experience, with dogma which is reasoning 
about it, and the acceptance of statements in Scripture which 
are metaphysical in nature, as if they were religious truths — 
these two things have, in time past, prevented many earnest 
thinkers from following the true road. When it comes to 
the constructive portion of his work, it is, of course, impossible 
for Ritschl to build Avithout the theoretical supports which 
philosophy gives, or to follow up certain of the characteristic 
magnitudes of religion without following them into the realm 
of metaphysics, to which, quite as truly as to that of religion, 
they belong. It would be unjust to Ritschl to suppose that 
these facts were hidden from him. 

As to his attitude toward mysticism, there is a word to say. 
In the long history of religious thought those who have re- 
volted against metaphysical interpretation, orthodox or un- 
orthodox, have usually taken refuge in mysticism. Hither 
the prophet Augustine takes refuge when he would flee the 
ecclesiastic Augustine, himself. The Brethren of the Free 
Spirit, Tauler, a Kempis, Suso, the author of the Theologia 
Germanica^ Molinos, Madame Guyon, illustrate the thing 
we mean. Ritschl had seen much of mysticism in pietist 
circles. He knew the history of the movement well. What 
impressed his sane mind was the fact that unhealthy minds 
have often claimed, as their revelation from God, an experience 
which might, with more truth, be assigned to almost any other 
source. He desired to cut off the possibility of what seemed 
to him often a tragic delusion. The margin of any mystical 
movement stretches out toward monstrosities and absurdities. 
For that matter, what prevents a Buddhist from declaring 
his thoughts and feelings to be Christianity ? Indeed, 
Ritschl asks, why is not Buddhism as good as such Chris- 
tianity ? He is, therefore, suspicious of revelations which 
have nothing by which they can be measured and checked. 
The claim of mystics that they come, in communion with 
God, to the point where they have no need of Christ, seemed 
to him impious. There is no way of knowing that we are in 



in.] THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 99 

fellowship with God, except by comparing what we feel that 
this fellowship has given us, with that which we historically 
learn that the fellow^ship with God gave to Christ. This is the 
sense and this the connexion in which Ritschl says that we 
cannot come to God save in and through the historic Christ 
as he is given us in the Gospels. The inner life, at least, 
which is there depicted for us is, in this outward and authori- 
tative sense, our norm and guide. 

Large difficulties loom upon the horizon of this positivistic 
insistence upon history. Can we know the inner life of Christ 
well enough to use it thus as test in every, or even in any 
case ? Does not the use of such a test, or of any test in this 
external way, take us out of the realm of the religion of the 
spirit ? Men once said that the Church was their guide. 
Others said the Scripture was their guide. Now, in the sense 
of the outwardness of its authority, we repudiate even this. 
It rings devoutly if we say Christ is our guide. Yet, as 
Ritschl describes this guidance, in the exigency of his conten- 
tion against mysticism, have we anything different ? What 
becomes of Confucianists and Shintoists, who have never 
heard of the historic Christ ? And all the while we have the 
sense of a query in our minds. Is it open to any man to re- 
pudiate mysticism absolutely and with contumely, and then 
leave us to discover that he does not mean mysticism as 
historians of every faith have understood it, but only the 
margin of evil which is apparently inseparable from it ? That 
margin of evil others see and deplore. Against it other 
remedies have been suggested, as, for example, intelligence. 
Some would feel that in Ritschl's remedy the loss is greater 
than the gain. 

This historical character of revelation is so truly one of the 
fountain heads of the theology which takes its rise in Ritschl, 
that it deserves to be considered somewhat more at length. 
The Ritschlian movement has engaged a generation of more 
or less notable thinkers in the period since Ritschl's death. 
These have dissented at many points from Ritschl's views, 
diverged from his path and marked out courses of their own. 
We shall do well in the remainder of this chapter to attempt 



100 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

the delineation in terms, not exclusively of Ritschl, but of that 
which may with some laxity be styled Ritschlianism. The 
value judgments of religion indicate only the subjective form 
of religious knowledge, as the RitschUans understand it. 
Faith, however, does not invent its own contents. Historical 
facts, composing the revelation, actually exist, quite inde- 
pendent of the use which the believer makes of them. No 
group of thinkers have more truly sought to draw near to the 
person of the historic Jesus. The historical person, Jesus 
of Nazareth, is the divine revelation. That sums up this 
aspect of the RitschUan position. Some negative conse- 
quences of this position we have already noted. Let us turn 
to its positive significance. 

Herrmann is the one of the Ritschhans who has dealt with 
this matter not only with great clearness, but also with deep 
Christian feeling in his Verkehr des Christen mit Gott, 1886, 
and notably in his address, Der Begriff der Offenbarung, 1887. 
If the motive of religion were an intellectual curiosity, a 
verbal communication would suffice. As it is a practical 
necessity, this must be met by actual impulse in life. That 
passing out of the unhappiness of sin, into the peace and larger 
life which is salvation, does indeed imply the movement 
of God's spirit on our hearts, in conversion and thereafter. 
This is essentially mediated to us through the Scriptures, 
especially through those of the New Testament, because 
the New Testament contains the record of the personaHty 
of Jesus. In that our personality is filled with the spirit 
which breathes in him, our salvation is achieved. The image 
of Jesus which we receive acts upon us as something in- 
dubitably real. It vindicates itself as real, in that it takes 
hold upon our manhood. Of course, this assumes that the 
Church has been right in accepting the Gospels as historical. 
Herrmann candidly faces this question. Not every word or 
deed, he says, which is recorded concerning Jesus, belongs 
to this central and dynamic revelation of which we speak. 
We do not help men to see Jesus in a saving way if, on the 
strength of accounts in the New Testament, we insist con- 
cerning Jesus that he was bom of a virgin, that he raised the 



m.] THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 101 

dead, that he himself rose from the dead. We should not 
put these things before men with the declaration that they 
must assent to them. We must not try to persuade ourselves 
that that which acted upon the disciples as indubitably real 
must of necessity act similarly upon us. We are to allow 
ourselves to be seized and uplifted by that which, in our 
position, touches us as indubitably real. This is, in the first 
place, the moral character of Jesus. It is his inner life which, 
on the testimony of the disciples, meets us as something real 
and active in the world, as truly now as then. What are some 
facts of this inner life ? The Jesus of the New Testament 
shows a firmness of religious conviction, a clearness of moral 
judgment, a purity and force of will, such as are not found 
united in any other figure in history. We have the image 
of a man who is conscious that he does not fall short of the 
ideal for which he offers himself. It is this consciousness 
which is yet united in him with the most perfect humility. 
He lives out his life and faces death in a confidence and in- 
dependence which have never been approached. He has 
confidence that he can lift men to such a height that they 
also will partake with him in the highest good, through 
their full surrender to God and their life of love for their 
fellows. 

It is clear that Herrmann aims to bring to the front 
only those elements in the life of Jesus which are likely to 
prove most effectual in meeting the need and winning the 
faith of the men of our age. He would cast into the back- 
ground those elements which are likely to awaken doubt 
and to hinder the approach of men's souls to God. For 
Herrmann himself the virgin birth has the significance that 
the spiritual life of Jesus did not proceed from the sinful race. 
But Herrmann admits that a man could hold even that 
without needing to allege that the physical life of Jesus did 
not come into being in the ordinary way. The distinction 
between the inner and outward life of Jesus, and the declara- 
tion that belief in the former alone is necessary, has the 
result of thus ridding us of questions which can scarcely 
fail to be present to the mind of every modem man. Yet 



102 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

it would be unjust to imply that this is the purpose. Quite 
the contrary, the distinction is logical for this theology. 
Redemption is an affair of the inner life of a man. It is the 
force of the inner life of the Redeemer which avails for it. 
It is from the belief that such an inner and spiritual hfe was 
once realised here on earth, that our own faith gathers strength 
and gets guidance in the conflict for the salvation of our 
souls. The belief in the historicity of such an inner life is 
necessary. So Hamack also declares in his Wesen des Christen- 
thums, 1900. It is noteworthy that in this connexion neither 
of these writers advances to a form of speculation concerning 
the exalted Christ, which in recent years has had some currency. 
According to this doctrine, there is ascribed to the risen and 
ascended Jesus an existence with God which is thought of 
in terms different from those which we associate with the 
idea of immortahty. In other words, this continued existence 
of Christ as God is a counterpart of that existence before 
the incarnation, which the doctrine of the pre-existence 
alleged. But surely this speculation can have no better stand- 
ing than that of the pre-existence. 

Sin in the language of religion is defection from the law 
of God. It is the transgression of the divine command. 
In what measure, therefore, the Ufe of man can be thought 
of as sinful, depends upon his knowledge of the will of God. 
In Scripture, as in the legends of the early history of the 
race, this knowledge stands in intimate connexion with the 
witness to a primitive revelation. This thought has had a 
curious history. The ideas of mankind concerning God and 
his will have grown and changed as much as have any other 
ideas. The rudimentary idea of the good is probably of social 
origin. It first emerges in the contact of men one with 
another. As the personalised ideal of conduct, the god then 
reacts upon conduct, as the conduct reacts upon the notion of 
the god. Only slowly has the ideal of the good been clarified. 
Only slowly have the gods been ethicised. ' An honest God 
is the noblest work of man.' The moralising and spiritualising 
of the idea of Jahve lies right upon the face of the Old Testa- 
ment. The ascent of man on his ethical and spiritual side 



m.] THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 103 

is as certain as is that on his physical side. Long struggle 
upward through ignorance, weakness, sin, gradual elevating 
of the standard of what ought to be, growingly successful 
effort to conform to that standard — this is what the history 
of the race has seen. 

Athwart this lies the traditional dogma. The dogma took 
up into itself a legend of the childhood of the world. It 
elaborated that which in Genesis is vague and poetic into a 
vast scheme which has passed as a sacred philosophy of 
history. It postulated an original revelation. It affirmed the 
created state of man as one of holiness before a fall. To the 
framers of the dogma, if sin is the transgression of God's will, 
then it must be in light of a revelation of that will. In the 
Scriptures we have vague intimations concerning God's will, 
growingly clearer knowledge of that will, evolving through 
history to Jesus. In the dogma we have this grand assump- 
tion of a paradisaic state of perfectness in which the will of 
God was from the beginning perfectly known. 

In the Platonic, as in the rabbinic, speculation the idea 
must precede the fact. Every step of progress is a defection 
from that idea. The dogma suffers from an insoluble contra- 
diction within itself. It aims to give us the point of departure 
by which we are to recognise the nature of sin. At the same 
moment it would describe the perfection of man at which 
God has willed that by age-long struggle he should arrive. 
Now, if we place this perfection at the beginning of human 
history, before all human self-determination, we divest 
it of ethical quality. Whatever else it may be, it is not 
character. On the other hand, if we would make this per- 
fection really that of moral character, then we cannot place 
it at the beginning of human history, but far down the course 
of the evolution of the higher human traits, of the conscious- 
ness of sin and of the struggle for redemption. It is not re- 
velation from God, but naive imagination, later giving place 
to adventurous speculation concerning the origin of the 
universe, which we have in the doctrine of the primaeval 
perfection of man. We do not really make earnest with our 
Christian claim that in Jesus we have our paramount reve- 



104 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

lation, until we admit this. It is through Jesus, and not 
from Adam that we know sin. 

So we might go on to say that the dogma of inherited guilt 
is a contradiction in terms. Disadvantage may be inherited, 
weakness, proclivity to sin, but not guilt, not sin in the sense 
of that which entails guilt. What entails guilt is action 
counter to the will of God which we know. That is always the 
act of the individual man myself. It cannot by any possi- 
bility be the act of another. It may be the consequence of 
the sins of my ancestors that I do moral evil without knowing 
it to be such. Even my fellows view this as a mitigation, if 
not as an exculpation. The very same act, however, which 
up to this point has been only an occasion for pity, becomes 
sin and entails guilt, when it passes through my own mind 
and will as a defection from a will of God in which I believe, 
and as a righteousness which I refuse. The confusion of guilt 
and sin in order to the inclusion of all under the need of sal- 
vation, as in the Augustinian scheme, ended in bewilderment 
and stultification of the moral sense. It caused men to 
despair of themselves and gravely to misrepresent God. It 
is no wonder if in the age of rationalism this dogma was 
largely done away with. The religious sense of sin was 
declared to be an hallucination. Nothing is more evident 
in the rationalist theology than its lack of the sense of sin. 
This alone is sufficient explanation of the impotency and 
inadequacy of that theology. Kant's doctrine of radical 
evil testifies to his deep sense that the rationalists were 
wrong. He could see also the impossibility of the ancient 
view. But he had no substitute. Hegel, much as he prided 
himself upon the restoration of dogma, viewed evil as only 
relative, good in the making. Schleiermacher made a begin- 
ning of construing the thought of sin from the point of view 
of the Christian consciousness. Ritschl was the first con- 
sistently to carry out Schleiermacher's idea, placing the 
Christian consciousness in the centre and claiming that the 
revelation of the righteousness of God and of the perfection 
of man is in Jesus. All men being sinners, there is a vast 
Bolidarity, which he describes as the Kingdom of Evil and 



in.] THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 105 

sets over against the Kingdom of God, yet not so that the 
freedom or responsibihty of man is impaired. God forgives 
all sin save that of wilful resistance to the spirit of the 
good. That is, Ritschl regards all sin, short of this last, 
as mainly ignorance and weakness. It is from Ritschl, and 
more particularly from Kaftan, that the phrases have been 
mainly taken which served as introduction to this paragraph. 
For the work of God through Christ, in the salvation of 
men from the guilt and power of sin, various terms have been 
used. Different aspects of the work have been described 
by different names. Redemption, regeneration, justification, 
reconciliation and election or predestination — these are the 
familiar words. This is the order in which the conceptions 
stand, if we take them as they occur in consciousness. Election 
then means nothing more than the ultimate reference to God 
of the mystery of an experience in which the believer already 
rejoices. On the other hand, in the dogma the order is re- 
versed. Election must come first, since it is the decree of 
God upon which all depends. Redemption and reconciliation 
have, in Christian doctrine, been traditionally regarded as 
completed transactions, waiting indeed to be applied to the 
individual or appropriated by him through faith, but of them- 
selves without relation to faith. Reconciliation was long 
thought of as that of an angry God to man. Especially was 
this last the characteristic view of the West, where juristic 
notions prevailed. Origen talked of a right of the devil over 
the soul of man until bought off by the sacrifice of Christ. 
This is pure paganism, of course. The doctrine of Anselm 
marks a great advance. It runs somewhat thus : The divine 
honour is offended in the sin of man. Satisfaction corre- 
sponding to the greatness of the guilt must be rendered. 
Man is under obligation to render this satisfaction ; yet he 
is unable so to do. A sin against God is an infinite offence. 
It demands an infinite satisfaction. Man can render no 
satisfaction which is not finite. The way out of this dilemma 
is the incarnation of the divine Logos. For the god-man, as 
man, is entitled to bring this satisfaction for men. On the 
other hand, as God he is able so to do. In his death this 



106 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

satisfaction is embodied. He gave his life freely. God 
having received satisfaction through him demands nothing 
more from us. 

Abelard had, almost at the same time with Anselm, inter- 
preted the death of Christ in far different fashion. It was a 
revelation of the love of God which wins men to love in turn. 
This notion of Abelard was far too subtle. The crass ob- 
jective dogma of Anselm prevailed. The death of Christ was 
a sacrifice. The purpose was the propitiation of an angry- 
God. The effect was that, on the side of God, a hindrance 
to man's salvation was removed. The doctrine accurately 
reflects the feudal ideas of the time which produced it. In 
Grotius was done away the notion of private right, which hes 
at the basis of the theory of Anselm. That of pubUc duty 
took its place. A sovereign need not stand upon his offended 
honour, as in Anselm's thought. Still, he cannot, like a 
private citizen, freely forgive. He must maintain the dignity 
of his office, in order not to demorahse the world. The 
sufferings of Christ did not effect a necessary private satis- 
faction. They were an example which satisfied the moral 
order of the world. Apart from this change, the conception 
remains the same. 

As Kaftan argues, we can escape the dreadful externality 
and artificiahty of this scheme, only as redemption and regene- 
ration are brought back to their primary pletce in conscious- 
ness. These are the initial experiences in which we become 
aware of God's work through Christ in us and for us. The 
reconciliation is of us. The redemption is from our sins. The 
regeneration is to a new moral hfe. Through the influence 
of Jesus, reconciled on our part to God and believing in His 
unchanging love to us, we are translated into God's kingdom 
and live for the eternal in our present existence. Redemption 
is indeed the work of God through Christ, but it has intelligible 
parallel in the awakening of the Ufe of the mind, or again of 
the spirit of self-sacrifice, through the personal influence of 
the wise and good. Salvation begins in such an awakening 
through the personal influence of the wisest and best. It 
is transformation of our personality through the personaUty 



m.] THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 107 

of Jesus, by the personal God of truth, of goodness and of 
love. All that which God through Jesus has done for us is 
futile, save as we make the actuaHsation of our deliverance 
from sin our continuous and unceasing task. When this 
connexion of thought is broken through, we transfer the 
whole matter of salvation from the inner to the outer world 
and make of it a transaction independent of the moral life 
of man. 

Justification and reconciliation also are primarily acts and 
gifts of God. Justification is a forensic act. The sense is not 
that in justification we are made just. We are, so to say, 
temporarily thus regarded, not that leniency may become 
the occasion of a new oflEence, but that in grateful love we 
may make it the starting point of a new life. We must justify 
our justification. It is easy to see the objections to such a 
course on the part of a civil judge. He must consider the 
rights of others. It was this which brought Grotius and the 
rest, with the New England theologians down to Park, to feel 
that forgiveness could not be quite free. If we acknowledge 
that this symbolism of God as judge or sovereign is all 
symbolism, mere figure of speech, not fact at all, then that 
objection — and much else — falls away. If we assert that 
another figure of speech, that of God as Father, more per- 
fectly suggests the relation of God and man, then forgiveness 
may be free. Then justification and forgiveness are only 
two words for one and the same idea. Then the nightmare 
of a God who would forgive and cannot, of a God who 
will forgive but may not justify until something further 
happens, is all done away. Then the relation of the death 
of Jesus to the forgiveness of our sins cannot be other than the 
relation of his life to that forgiveness. Both the one and 
the other are a revelation of the forgiving love of God. We 
may say that in his death the whole meaning of his life was 
gathered. We may say that his death was the consum- 
mation of his life, that without it his life would not have 
been what it is. This is, however, very far from being the 
ordinary statement of the relation of Jesus' death, either to 
his own life or to the forgiveness of our sins. 



108 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch, 

The doctrinal tradition made much also of the dehverance 
from punishment which follows after the forgiveness of sin. 
In fact, in many forms of the dogma, it has been the escape 
from pimishment which was chiefly had in mind. Along 
with the forensic notion of salvation we largely or wholly 
discard the notion of punishment. We retain only the sense 
that the consequence of continuing in sin is to become more 
sinful. God himself is powerless to prevent that. Punish- 
ment is immanent, vital, necessary. The penalty is gradually 
taken away if the sin itself is taken away — ^not otherwise. 
It returns with the sin, it continues in the sin, it is insepar- 
able from the sin. Punishment is no longer the right word. 
Reward is not the true description of that growing better which 
is the consequence of being good. Reward or punishment as 
quid pro quo, as arbitrary assignments, as external equiva- 
lents, do not so much as belong to the world of ideas in which 
we move. For this view the idea that God laid upon Jesus 
penalties due to us, fades into thin air. Jesus could by no 
possibihty have met the punishment of sin, except he him- 
self had been a sinner. Then he must have met the punish- 
ment of his own sin and not that of others. That portion 
which one may gladly bear of the consequences of another's 
sin may rightfully be called by almost any other name. It 
cannot be called punishment since punishment is immanent. 
Even eternal death is not a judicial assignment for our ob- 
stinate sinfulness. Eternal death is the obstinate sinfulness, 
and the sinfulness the death. 

It must be evident that reconcihation can have, in this 
scheme, no meaning save that of man's being reconciled to 
God. Jesus reveals a God who has no need to be reconciled 
to us. The alienation is not on the side of God. That, being 
alienated from God, man may imagine that God is hostile to 
him, is only the working of a familiar law of the human 
mind. The fiction of an angry God is the most awful survival 
among us of primitive paganism. That which Jesus by his 
revelation of God brought to pass was a true ' at-one-ment,' 
a causing of God and man to be at one again. To the word 
atonement, as currently pronounced, and as^ until a half 



m.] THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 109 

century ago, almost universally apprehended, the notion of 
that which is sacrificial attached. To the life and death of 
Jesus, as revelation of God and Saviour of men, we can no 
longer attach any sacrificial meaning whatsoever. There is 
indeed the perfectly general sense in which so beautiful a 
life and so heroic a death were, of course, a grand exempli- 
fication of self-sacrifice. Yet this is a sense so different from 
the other and in itself so obvious, that one hesitates to use 
the same word in the immediate context with that other, lest 
it should appear that the intention was to obscure rather 
than to make clear the meaning. For atonement in a sense 
different from that of reconciliation, we have no significance 
whatever. Reconciliation and atonement describe one and 
the same fact. In the dogma the words were as far as possible 
from being synonyms. They referred to two facts, the one 
of which was the means and essential prerequisite of the other. 
The vicarious sacrifice was the antecedent condition of the 
reconciling of God. In our thought it is not a reconciliation 
of God which is aimed at. No sacrifice is necessary. No 
sacrifice such as that postulated is possible. Of the recon- 
ciliation of man to God the only condition is the revelation 
of the love of God in the life and death of Jesus and the 
obedient acceptance of that revelation on the part of men. 



no HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL MOVEMENT 

It has been said that in Christian times the relation of philo- 
sophy and religion may be determined by the attitude of 
reason toward a single matter, namely, the churchly doctrine 
of revelation.^ There are three possible relations of reason 
to this doctrine. First, it may be affirmed that the content 
of religion and theology is matter communicated to man in 
extraordinary fashion, truth otherwise unattainable, on which 
it is beyond the competence of reason to sit in judgment. We 
have then the two spheres arbitrarily separated. As regards 
their relation, theology is at first supreme. Reason is the 
handmaiden of faith. It is occupied in applying the prin- 
ciples which it receives at the hands of theology. These are 
the so-called Ages of Faith. Notably was this the attitude 
of the Middle Age. But in the long run either authoritative 
revelation, thus conceived, must extinguish reason altogether, 
or else reason must claim the whole man. After all, it is in 
virtue of his having some reason that man is the subject of 
revelation. He is continually asked to exercise his reason 
upon certain parts of the revelation, even by those who main- 
tain that he must do so only within hmits. It is only because 
there is a certain reasonableness in the conceptions of revealed 
religion that man has ever been able to make them his own 
or to find in them meaning and edification. This external 
relation of reason to revelation cannot continue. Nor can 
the encroachments of reason be met by temporary distinctions 
such as that between the natural and the supernatural. The 
antithesis to the natural is not the supernatural, but the 
unnatural. The antithesis to reason is not faith, but irra- 
1 Seth Pringle-Pattison, The Philosophical Radimls, p. 216. 



IV.] THE CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL MOVEMENT 111 

tionality. The antithesis to human truth is not the divine 
truth. It is falsehood. 

When men have made this discovery, a revulsion carries 
their minds to the second position of which we spoke. This 
is, namely, the position of extreme denial. It is an attitude 
of negation toward revelation, such as prevailed in the barren 
and trivial rationalism of the end of the eighteenth century. 
The reason having been long repressed revenges itself, usurp- 
ing everything. The explanation of the rise of positive re- 
ligion and of the claim of revelation is sought in the hypothesis 
of deceit, of ambitious priestcraft and incurable credulity. 
The religion of those who thus argue, in so far as they claim any 
religion, is merely the current morality. Their explanation of 
the religion of others is that it is merely the current morality 
plus certain unprovable assumptions. Indeed, they may 
think it to be but the obstinate adherence to these assump- 
tions minus the current morality. It is impossible that this 
shallow view should prevail. To overcome it, however, there 
is need of a philosophy which shall give not less, but greater 
scope to reason and at the same time an inward meaning to 
revelation. 

This brings us to the third possible position, to which the 
best thinkers of the nineteenth century have advanced. So 
long as deistic views of the relation of God to man and the 
world held the field, revelation meant something interjected 
ah extra into the established order of things. The popular 
theology which so abhorred deism was yet essentially 
deistic in its notion of God and of his separation from the 
world. Men did not perceive that by thus separating God 
from the world they set up alongside of him a sphere and an 
activity to which his relations were transient and accidental. 
No wonder that other men, finding their satisfying activity 
within the sphere which was thus separated from God, came 
to think of this absentee God as an appendage to the scheme 
of things. But if man himself be inexplicable, save as sharing 
in the wider life of universal reason, if the process of history 
be realised as but the working out of an inherent divine pur- 
pose, the manifestation of an indwelling divine force, then 



112 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

revelation denotes no longer an interference with that evolu- 
tion. It is a factor in that evolution. It is but the normal 
relation of the immanent spirit of God to the children of men 
at the crises of their fate. Then revelation is an experience 
of men precisely in the line and according to the method of 
all their nobler experiences. It is itself reasonable and moral. 
Inspiration is the normal and continuous efifect of the con- 
tact of the God who is spirit with man who is spirit too. 
The relation is never broken. But there are times in which 
it has been more particularly felt. There have been per- 
sonalities to whom in eminent degree this depth of communion 
with God has been vouchsafed. To such persons and eras 
the religious sense of mankind, by a true instinct, has tended 
to restrict the words ' revelation ' and * inspiration.' This 
restriction, however, signifies the separation of the grand 
experience from the ordinary, only in degree and not in 
kind. Such an experience was that of prophets and law- 
givers under the ancient covenant. Such an experience, in 
immeasurably greater degree, was that of Jesus himself. 
Such a turning-point in the life of the race was the advent of 
Christianity. The world has not been wrong in calling the 
documents of these revelations sacred books and in attri- 
buting to them divine authority. It has been largely wrong 
in the manner in which it construed their authority. It 
has been wholly wrong in imagining that the documents 
themselves were the revelation. They are merely the record 
of a personal communion with the transcendent. It was 
Lessing who first cast these fertile ideas into the soil of 
modem thought. They were never heartily taken up by 
Kant. One can think, however, with what enthusiasm men 
recurred to them after their postulates had been verified 
and the idea of God, of man and of the world which they 
implied, had been confirmed by Fichte and Schelling. 

In the philosophical movement, the outline of which we 
have suggested, what one may call the nidus of a new faith 
in Scripture had been prepared. The quality had been fore- 
cast which the Scripture must be found to possess, if it were 
to retain its character as document of revelation. In those 



IV.] THE CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL MOVEMENT 113 

very same years the great movement of biblical criticism was 
gathering force which, in the course of the nineteenth century, 
was to prove by stringent literary and historical methods, 
what qualities the documents which we know as Scripture 
do possess. It was to prove in the most objective fashion 
that the Scripture does not possess those qualities which 
men had long assigned to it. It was to prove that, as a 
matter of fact, the literature does possess the qualities which 
the philosophic forecast, above hinted, required. It was 
thus actually to restore the Bible to an age in which many 
reasonable men had lost their faith in it. It was to give a 
genetic reconstruction of the literature and show the progress 
of the history which the Scripture enshrines. After a contest 
in which the very foundations of faith seemed to be removed, 
it was to afford a basis for a belief in Scripture and revelation 
as positive and secure as any which men ever enjoyed, with 
the advantage that it is a foundation upon which the modern 
man can and does securely build. The synchronism of the 
two endeavours is remarkable. The convergence upon one 
point, of studies starting, so to say, from opposite poles and 
having no apparent interest in common, is instructive. It 
is an illustration of that which Comte said, that all the great 
intellectual movements of a given time are but the mani- 
festation of a common impulse, which pervades and possesses 
the minds of the men of that time. 



The attempt to rationalise the narrative of Scripture was 
no new one. It grew in intensity in the early years of the 
nineteenth century. The conflict which was presently 
precipitated concerned primarily the Gospels. It was 
natural that it should do so. These contain the most im- 
portant Scripture narrative, that of the life of Jesus. Strauss 
had in good faith turned his attention to the Gospels, precisely 
because he felt their central importance. His generation 
was to learn that they presented also the greatest difficulties. 

H 



114 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

The old rationalistic interpretation had started from the 
assumption that what we have in the gospel narrative is fact. 
Yet, of course, for the rationalists, the facts must be natural. 
They had the appearance of being supernatural only through 
the erroneous judgment of the narrators. It was for the 
interpreter to reduce everything which is related to its simple, 
natural cause. The water at Cana was certainly not turned 
into wine. It must have been brought by Jesus as a present 
and opened thus in jest. Jesus was, of course, begotten in 
the natural manner. A simple maiden must have been 
deceived. The execution of this task of the rationalising of 
the narratives by one Dr. Paulus, was the reductio ad ahsurdum 
of the claim. The most spiritual of the narratives, the finest 
flower of religious poetry, was thus turned into the meanest 
and most trivial incident without any religious significance 
whatsoever. The obtuseness of the procedure was exceeded 
only by its vulgarity. 

Strauss 

On the other hand, as Pfleiderer has said, we must remember 
the difl&culty which beset the men of that age. Their general 
culture made it difiicult for them to accept the miraculous 
element in the gospel narrative as it stood. Yet their theory 
of Scripture gave them no notion as to any other way in 
which the narratives might be imderstood. The men had 
never asked themselves how the narratives arose. In the 
preface to his Leben Jesu, Strauss said : ' Orthodox and 
rationalists alike proceed from the false assumption that we 
have always in the Gospels testimony, sometimes even that of 
eye-witnesses, to fact. They are, therefore, reduced to asking 
themselves what can have been the real and natural fact 
which is here witnessed to in such extraordinary way. We 
have to realise,' Strauss proceeds, ' that the narrators testify 
sometimes, not to outward facts, but to ideas, often most 
poetical and beautiful ideas, constructions which even eye- 
witnesses had unconsciously put upon facts, imagination con- 
cerning them, reflexions upon them, reflexions and imaginings 



IV.] THE CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL MOVEMENT 115 

such as were natural to the time and at the author's level of 
culture. What we have here is not falsehood, not misre- 
presentation of the truth. It is a plastic, naive, and, at the 
same time, often most profound apprehension of truth, within 
the area of religious feeling and poetic insight. It results 
in narrative, legendary, mythical in nature, illustrative often 
of spiritual truth in a manner more perfect than any hard, 
prosaic statement could achieve.' Before Strauss men had 
appreciated that particular episodes, like the virgin birth and 
the bodily resurrection, might have some such explanation as 
this. No one had ever undertaken to apply this method con- 
sistently, from one end to the other of the gospel narrative. 
What was of more significance, no one had clearly defined 
the conception of legend. Strauss was sure that in the 
application of this notion to certain portions of the Scripture 
no irreverence was shoVn. No moral taint was involved. 
Nothing which could detract from the reverence in which we 
hold the Scripture was implied. Rather, in his view, the 
history of Jesus is more wonderful than ever, when some, at 
least, of its elements are viewed in this way, when they are 
seen as the product of the poetic spirit, working all uncon- 
sciously at a certain level of culture and under the impulse 
of a great enthusiasm. 

There is no doubt that Strauss, who was at that time 
an earnest Christian, felt the relief from certain diflS- 
culties in the biography of Jesus which this theory affords. 
He put it forth in all sincerity as affording to others like 
relief. He said that while rationalists and supernaturalists 
alike, by their methods, sacrificed the divine content of the 
story and clung only to its form, his hypothesis sacrificed the 
historicity of the narrative form, but kept the eternal and 
spiritual truth. In his opinion, the lapse of a single generation 
was enough to give room for this process of the growth of the 
legendary elements which have found place in the written 
Gospels which we have. Ideas entertained by primitive 
Christians relative to their lost Master, have been, all unwit- 
tingly, transformed into facts and woven into the tale of his 
career. The legends of a people are in their basal elements 



116 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

never the work of a single individual. They are never 
intentionally produced. The imperceptible growth of a Joint 
creative work of this kind was possible, however, only on the 
supposition that oral tradition was, for a time, the means of 
transmission of the reminiscences of Jesus. Strauss' ex- 
planation of his theory has been given above, to some extent 
in his own words. We may see how he understood himself. 
We may appreciate also the genuineness of the religious spirit 
of his work. At the same time the thorough-going way in 
which he apphed his principle, the relentless march of his 
argument, the character of his results, must sometimes have 
been startling even to himself. They certainly startled 
others. The effect of his work was instantaneous and im- 
mense. It was not at all the effect which he anticipated. 
The issue of the furious controversy which broke out was 
disastrous both to Strauss' professional career and to his 
whole temperament and character. 

David Friedrich Strauss was born in 1808 in Ludwigsburg in 
Wiirttemberg. He studied in Tiibingen and in Berlin. He 
became an instructor in the theological faculty in Tiibingen 
in 1832. He published his Lehen Jesu in 1835. He was 
almost at once removed from his position. In 1836 he with- 
drew altogether from the professorial career. His answer to 
his critics, written in 1837, was in bitter tone. More con- 
ciliatory was his book, IJher Vergdngliches und Bleibendes im 
Christenthum, published in 1839. Indeed there were some 
concessions in the third edition of his Lehen Jesu in 1838, 
but these were all repudiated in 1840. His Lehen Jesufiir das 
deutsche Volk, published in 1860, was the effort to popularise 
that which he had done. It is, however, in point of method, 
superior to his earlier work. Comments were met with even 
greater bitterness. Finally, not long before his death in 1874, 
he published Der Alte und der Neue Glauhe, in which he de- 
finitely broke with Christianity altogether and went over to 
materialism and pessimism. 

Pfleiderer, who had had personal acquaintance with Strauss 
and held him in regard, once wrote : ' Strauss' error did 
not lie in his regarding some of the gospel stories as legends, 



IV.] THE CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL MOVEMENT 117 

and some of the narratives of the miraculous as symbols of 
ideal truths. So far Strauss was right. The contribution 
which he made is one which we have all appropriated and 
built upon. His error lay in his looking for those religious 
truths which are thus symbolised, outside of religion itself, 
in adventurous metaphysical speculations. He did not seek 
them in the facts of the devout heart and moral will, as these 
are illustrated in the actual life of Jesus.' If Strauss, after 
the disintegration in criticism of certain elements in the bio- 
graphy of Jesus, had given us a positive picture of Jesus 
as the ideal of religious character and ethical force, his work 
would indeed have been attacked. But it would have out- 
lived the attack and conferred a very great benefit. It 
conferred a great benefit as it was, although not the benefit 
which Strauss supposed. The benefit which it really con- 
ferred was in its critical method, and not at all in its results. 

Of the mass of polemic and apologetic literature which 
Strauss' Lehen Jesu called forth, little is at this distance 
worth the mentioning. UUmann, who was far more ap- 
preciative than most of his adversaries, points out the real 
weakness of Strauss' work. That weakness lay in the failure 
to draw any distinction between the historical and the 
mythical. He threatened to dissolve the whole history into 
myth. He had no sense for the ethical element in the per- 
sonality and teaching of Jesus nor of the creative force which 
this must have exerted. UUmann says with cogency that, 
according to Strauss, the Church created its Christ virtually 
out of pure imagination. But we are then left with the query : 
What created the Church ? To this query Strauss has 
absolutely no answer to give. The answer is, says UUmann, 
that the ethical personality of Jesus created the Church. 
This ethical personality is thus a supreme historic fact and 
a sublime historic cause, to which we must endeavour to pene- 
trate, if need be through the veil of legend. The old ration- 
alists had made themselves ridiculous by their effort to 
explain everything in some natural way. Strauss and his 
followers often appeared frivolous, since, according to them, 
there was little left to be explained. If a portion of the 



118 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

narrative presented a difficulty, it was declared mythical. 
What was needed was such a discrimination between the 
legendary and historical elements in the Gospels as could 
be reached only by patient, painstaking study of the 
actual historical quality and standing of the documents. 
No adequate study of this kind had ever been under- 
taken. Strauss did not undertake it, nor even perceive 
that it was to be undertaken. There had been many men 
of vast learning in textual and philological criticism. Here, 
however, a new sort of critique was applied to a problem 
which had but just now been revealed in all its length and 
breadth. The establishing of the principles of this historical 
criticism — the so-called Higher Criticism — was the herculean 
task of the generation following Strauss. To the develop- 
ment of that science another Tiibingen professor, Baur, 
made permanent contribution.^ With Strauss himself, 
sadder than the ruin of his career, was the tragedy of 
the uprooting of his faith. This tragedy followed in many 
places in the wake of the recognition of Strauss' fatal 
half-truth. 

Baub 

Baur, Strauss' own teacher in Tiibingen, afterward famous 
as biblical critic and church-historian, said of Strauss' book, 
that through it was revealed in startling fashion to that 
generation of scholars, how little real knowledge they had of 
the problem which the Gospels present. To Baur it was clear 
that if advance was to be made beyond Strauss' negative 
results, the criticism of the gospel history must wait upon 
an adequate criticism of the documents which are our 
sources for that history. Strauss' failure had brought 
home to the minds of men the fact that there were certain 
preliminary studies which must needs be taken up. Mean- 
time the other work must wait. As one surveys the litera- 
ture of the next thirty years this fact stands out. Many 
apologetic lives of Jesus had to be written in reply to Strauss. 
But they are almost completely negligible. No constructive 



IV.] THE CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL MOVEMENT 119 

work was done in this field until nearly a generation had 
passed. 

Since all history, said Baur, before it reaches us must pass 
through the medium of a narrator, our first question as to 
the gospel history is not, what objective reality can be ac- 
corded to the narrative itself. There is a previous question. 
This concerns the relation of the narrative to the narrator. 
It might be very difficult for us to make up our minds as to 
what it was that, in a given case, the witness saw. We have 
not material for such a judgment. We have probably much 
evidence, up and down his writings, as to what sort of man 
the witness was, in what manner he would be likely to see 
anything and with what personal equation he would relate 
that which he saw. Baur would seem to have been the first 
vigorously and consistently to apply this principle to the 
gospel narratives. Before we can penetrate deeply into the 
meaning of an author we must know, if we may, his purpose 
in writing. Every author belongs to the time in which he 
lives. The greater the importance of his subject for the 
parties and struggles of his day, the safer is the assumption 
that both he and his work will bear the impress of these 
struggles. He will represent the interests of one or another 
of the parties. His work will have a tendency of some kind. 
This was one of Baur's oft-used words — the tendency of a 
writer and of his work. We must ascertain that tendency. 
The explanation of many things both in the form and sub- 
stance of a writing would be given could we but know that. 
The letters of Paul, for example, are written in palpable 
advocacy of oi^inions which were bitterly opposed by other 
apostles. The biographies of Jesus suggest that they also 
represent, the one this tendency, the other that. We have 
no cause to assert that this trait of which we speak implies 
conscious distortion of the facts which the author would relate. 
The simple-minded are generally those least aware of the bias 
in the working of their own minds. It is obvious that until 
we have reckoned with such elements as these, we cannot truly 
Judge of that which the Gospels say. To the elaboration of 
the principles of this historical criticism Baur gave the labour 



120 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

of his life. His biblical work alone would have been epoch- 
making. 

Ferdinand Christian Baur was bom in 1793 in Schmieden, 
near Stuttgart. He became a professor in Tiibingen in 1826 
and died there in 1860. He was an ardent disciple of Hegel. 
His greatest work was surely in the field of the history of 
dogma. His works, Die ChristUche Lehre von der Versohnung, 
1838, Die ChristUche Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit und Mensch- 
werdung Gottes, 1841-1843, his Lehrbuch der Christlichen Dogmen- 
geschichte, 1847, together constitute a contribution to which 
Harnack's work in our own time alone furnishes a parallel. 
Baur had begun his thorough biblical studies before the 
publication of Strauss' book. The direction of those studies 
was more than ever confirmed by his insight of the short- 
comings of Strauss' work. Very characteristically also he 
had begun his investigations, not at the most difficult point, 
that of the Gospels, as Strauss had done, but at the easiest 
point, the Epistles of Paul. As early as 1831 he had pub- 
lished a tractate. Die Christus-Partei in der Corinthischen 
Gemeinde, In that book he had delineated the bitter contest 
between Paul and the Judaising element in the Apostolic 
Church which opposed Paul whithersoever he went. In 1835 
his disquisition. Die sogenannten Pastoral-Briefe, appeared. 
In the teachings of these letters he discovered the antithesis 
to the gnostic heresies of the second century. He thought 
also that the stage of organisation of the Church which they 
imply, accorded better with this supposition than with that 
of their apostolic authorship. The same general theme is 
treated in a much larger way in Baur's Paulus, der Apostel 
Jesu Christi, in 1845. Here the results of his study of the 
book of the Acts are combined with those of his inquiries as 
to the Pauline Epistles. In the history of the apostolic age 
men had been accustomed to see the evidence only of peace 
and harmony. Baur sought to show that the period had been 
one of fierce struggle, between the narrow Judaic and legalistic 
form of faith in the Messiah and that conception, introduced 
by Paul, of a world-religion free from the law. Out of this 
conflict, which lasted a hundred and fifty years, went forth 



IV.] THE CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL MOVEMENT 121 

the Catholic Church. The monuments of this struggle and 
witnesses of this process of growth are the New Testament 
writings, most of which were produced in the second cen- 
tury. The only documents which we have which were written 
before a.d. 70, were the four great Epistles of Paul, those 
to the Galatians, to the Romans, and to the Corinthians, 
together with the Apocalypse. 

Many details in Baur's view are now seen to have been 
overstated and others false. Yet this was the first time that a 
true historical method had been applied to the New Testament 
literature as a whole. Baur's contribution lay in the origin- 
ality of his conception of Christianity, in his emphasis upon 
Paul, in his realisation of the magnitude of the struggle which 
Paul inaugurated against Jewish prejudices in the primitive 
Church. In his idea, the issue of that struggle was, on the one 
hand, the freeing of Christianity from Judaism and on the 
other, the developing of Christian thought into a system of 
dogma and of the scattered Christian communities into an 
organised Church. The Fourth Gospel contains, according 
to Baur, a Christian gnosis parallel to the gnosis which was 
more and more repudiated by the Church as heresy. The 
Logos, the divine principle of life and light, appears bodily 
in the phenomenal world in the person of Jesus. It enters 
into conflict with the darkness and evil of the world. This 
speculation is but thinly clothed in the form of a biography 
of Jesus. That an account completely dominated by specu- 
lative motives gives but slight guarantee of historical truth, 
was for Baur self-evident. The author remains unknown, 
the age uncertain. The book, however, can hardly have 
appeared before the time of the Montanist movement, that is, 
toward the end of the second century. Scholars now rate far 
more highly than did Baur the element of genuine Johannine 
tradition which may lie behind the Fourth Gospel and account 
for its name. They do not find traces of Montanism or of 
paschal controversies. But the main contention stands. 
The Fourth Gospel represents the beginning of elaborate re- 
flexion upon the life and work of Jesus. It is what it is 
because of the fusion of the ethical and spiritual content of 



122 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

the revelation in the personaUty of Jesus, with metaphysical 
abstractions and philosophical interpretation. 

Baur was by no meaiis so fortunate in the solution which 
he offered of the problem which the synoptic Gospels present. 
His opinions are of no interest except as showing that he too 
worked diligently upon a question which for a long time 
seemed only to grow in complexity and which has busied 
scholars practically from Baur's day to our own. His zeal 
here also to discover dogmatic purposes led him astray. 
The Tendenzkritik had its own tendencies. The chief was to 
exaggeration and one-sidedness. Baur had the kind of ear 
which hears grass grow. There is much overstrained acumen. 
Many radically false conclusions are reached by prejudiced 
operation with an historical formula, which in the last analysis 
is that of Hegel. Everything is to be explained on the prin- 
ciple of antithesis. Again, the assumption of conscious purpose 
in everything which men do or write is a grave exaggeration. 
It is often in contradiction of that wonderful unconscious- 
ness with which men and institutions move to the fulfilment 
of a purpose for the good, the purpose of God, into which 
their own life is grandly taken up. To make each phase 
of such a movement the contribution of some one man's 
scheme or endeavour is, as was once said, to make God act 
Uke a professor. 



The method of this book is that it seeks to deal only with 
men who have inaugurated movements, or marked some turn- 
ing-point in their course which has proved of more than usual 
significance. The compass of the book demands such a Umi- 
tation. But by this method whole chapters in the life of 
learning are passed over, in which the substance of achieve- 
ment has been the cariying out of a plan of which we have 
been able to note only the inception. Tliere is a sense in 
which the carrying out of a plan is both more difficult and 
more worthy than the mere setting it in motion. When one 
thinks of the labour and patience which have been expended. 



IV.] THE CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL MOVEMENT 123 

for example, upon the problem of the Gospels in the past 
seventy years, these truths come home to us. When one 
reminds himself of the hypotheses which have been made but 
to be abandoned, which have yet had the value that they at 
least indicated the area within which solutions do not lie, — 
w^hen one thinks of the wellnigh immeasurable toil by which 
we have been led to large results which now seem secure, 
one is made to realise that the conditions of the advance of 
science are, for theologians, not different from those which 
obtain for scholars who, in any other field, would establish 
truth and lead men. In a general way, however, it may be 
said that the course of opinion in these two generations, in 
reference to such questions as those of the dates and authorship 
of the New Testament writings, has been one of rather note- 
worthy retrogression from many of the Tiibingen positions. 
Harnack's Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, 1893, and 
his Chronologie der altchristlichen Literatur, 1897, present a 
marked contrast to Baur's scheme. 

The Canon 

The minds of New Testament scholars in the last generation 
have been engaged with a question which, in its full significance, 
was hardly present to the attention of Baur's school. It is 
the question of the New Testament as a whole. It is the 
question as to the time and manner and motives of the gather- 
ing together of the separate writings into a canon of Scripture 
which, despite the diversity of its elements, exerted its in- 
fluence as a unit and to which an authority was ascribed, 
which the particular writings cannot originally have had. 
When and how did the Christians come to have a sacred book 
which they placed on an equality with the Old Testament, 
which last they had taken over from the synagogue ? How 
did they choose the writings which were to belong to this new 
collection ? Why did they reject books which we know were 
read for edification in the early churches? Deeper even than 
the question of the growth of the collection is that of the 
growth of the apprehension concerning it. This apprehension 



124 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ca 

of these twenty-seven different writings as constituting the 
sole document of Christian revelation, given by the Holy 
Spirit, the identical holy book of the Christian Church, gave 
to the book a significance altogether different from that which 
its constituent elements must have had for men to whom 
they had appeared as but the natural literary deposit of the 
religious movement of the apostolic age. This apprehension 
took possession of the mind of the Christian community. 
It was made the subject of deliverances by councils of the 
Church. How did this great transformation take place ? 
Was it an isolated achievement, or was it part of a general 
movement ? Did not this development of Ufe in the Christian 
communities which gave them a New Testament belong to 
an evolution which gave them also the so-called Apostles' 
Creed and a monarchical organisation of the Church and 
the beginnings of a ritual of worship ? 

It is clear that we have here a question of greatest moment. 
With the rise of this idea of the canon, with the assigning to 
this body of literature the character of Scripture, we have the 
beginning of the larger mastery which the New Testament has 
exerted over the minds and Ufe of men. Compared with this 
question, investigations as to the authorship and as to the 
time, place and circumstance of the production of particular 
books, came, for the time, to occupy a secondary rank. 
As they have emerged again, they wear a new aspect and are 
approached in a different spirit. The writings are revealed as 
belonging to a far larger context, that of the whole body of 
the Christian literature of the age. It in no way follows 
from that which we have said that the body of documents, 
which ultimately found themselves together in the New 
Testament, have not a unity other than the outward one 
which was by consensus of opinion or conciliar decree imposed 
upon them. They do represent, in the large and in varying 
degrees, an inward and spiritual unity. There was an in- 
spiration of the main body of these writings, the outward 
condition of which, at all events, was the nearness of their 
writers to Jesus or to his eye-witnesses, and the consequence 
of which was the unique relation which the more important 



IV.] THE CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL MOVEMENT 125 

of these documents historically bore to the formation of the 
Christian Church. There was a heaven which lay about 
the infancy of Christianity which only slowly faded into the 
common light of day. That heaven was the spirit of the 
Master himself. The chief of these writings do centrally 
enshrine the first pure illumination of that spirit. But the 
churchmen who made the canon and the Fathers who argued 
about it very often gave mistaken reasons for facts in respect 
of which they nevertheless were right. They gave what they 
considered sound external reasons. They alleged apostolic 
authorship. They should have been content with internal 
evidence and spiritual efiPectiveness. The apostles had come, 
in the mind of the early Church, to occupy a place of unique 
distinction. Writings long enshrined in affection for their 
potent influence, but whose origin had not been much con- 
sidered, were now assigned to apostles, that they might have 
authority and distinction. The theory of the canon came 
after the fact. The theory was often wrong. The canon had 
been, in the main and in its inward principle, soundly con- 
stituted. Modem critics reversed the process. They began 
where the Church Fathers left off. They tore down first 
that which had been last built up. Modern criticism, too, 
passed through a period in which points like those of author- 
ship and date of Gospels and Epistles seemed the only ones 
to be considered. The results being here often negative, 
complete disintegration of the canon seemed threatened, 
through discovery of errors in the processes by which the 
canon had been outwardly built up. Men realise now that 
that was a mistake. 

Two things have been gained in this discussion. There is 
first the recognition that the canon is a growth. The holy 
book and the conception of its holiness, as well, were evolved. 
Christianity was not primarily a book-religion save in the 
sense that almost all Christians revered the Old Testament. 
Other writings than those which we esteem canonical were 
long used in churches. Some of those afterward canonical 
were not used in all the churches. In similar fashion we have 
learned that identical statements of faith were not current 



126 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

in the earliest churches. Nor was there one uniform system 
of organisation and government. There was a time con- 
cerning which we cannot accurately use the word Church. 
There were churches, very simple, worshipping communities. 
But the Church, as outward magnitude, as triumphant or- 
ganisation, grew. So there were many creeds or, at least, in- 
formally accredited and current beginnings of doctrine. By and 
by there was a formally accepted creed. So there were first 
dearly loved memorials of Jesus and letters of apostolic men. 
Only by and by was there a New Testament. The first gain 
is the recognition of this state of things. The second follows. 
It is the recognition that, despite a sense in which this litera- 
ture is unique, there is also a sense in which it is but a part of 
the whole body of early Christian literature. From the exact 
and exhaustive study of the early Christian literature as a 
whole, we are to expect a clearer understanding and a juster 
estimate of the canonical part of it. It is not easy to say to 
whom we have to ascribe the discovery and elaboration of 
these truths. The historians of dogma have done much for 
this body of opinion. The historians of Christian literature 
have perhaps done more. Students of institutions and of the 
canon law have had their share. Baur had more than an 
inkling of the true state of things. But by far the most con- 
spicuous teacher of our generation, in two at least of these 
particular fields, has been Hamack. In his lifelong labour 
upon the sources of Christian history, he had come upon this 
question of the canon again and again. In his Lehrbuch der 
Dogmengeschichte, 1887-1890, 4te. Aufl., 1910, the view 
of the canon, which was given above, is absolutely funda- 
mental. In his Geschichte der altchristUchen Literatur bis 
EusebiuSy 1893, and Ghronologie der altchristUchen Literatur, 
1897-1904, the evidence is offered in rich detail. It was 
in his tractate. Das Neue Testament um das Jahr 200, 
1889, that he contended for the later date against Zahn, 
who had urged that the outline of the New Testament was 
estabhshed and the conception of it as Scripture present, by 
the end of the first century. Hamack argues that the decision 
practically shaped itself between the time of Justin Martyr, 



IV.] THE CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL MOVEMENT 127 

c. A.D. 150, and that of Irenaeus, c. a.d. 180. The studies of 
the last twenty years have more and more confirmed this 
view. 

Life of Jesus 

We said that the work of Strauss revealed nothing so clearly 
as the ignorance of his time concerning the documents of the 
early Christian movement. The labours of Baur and of his 
followers were directed toward overcoming this difficulty. 
Suddenly the pubHc interest was stirred and the earlier ex- 
citement recalled by the publication of a new life of Jesus. 
The author was a Frenchman, Ernest Renan, at one time a 
candidate for the priesthood in the Roman Church. He was 
a man of learning and literary skill, who made his Vie de 
J6sus, which appeared in 1863, the starting-point for a series 
of historical works under the general title, Les Origines du 
Christianisme. In the next year appeared Strauss' popular 
work, Leben Jesu fur das deutsche Volk. In 1864 was pub- 
lished also Weizsacker's contribution to the life of Christ, 
his Untersuchungen iiber die evangelische Geschichte. To the 
same year belonged Schenkel's Charakterbild Jesu. In the 
years from 1867-1872 appeared Keim's Geschichte Jesu von 
Nazara. There is something very striking in this recurrence 
to the topic. After all, this was the point for the sake of 
which those laborious investigations had been undertaken. 
This was and is the theme of undying religious interest, the 
character and career of the Nazarene. Renan's philosophical 
studies had been mainly in English, studies of Locke and 
Hume. But Herder also had been his beloved guide. For his 
biblical and oriental studies he had turned almost exclusively 
to the Germans. There is a deep religious spirit in the work 
of the period of his conflict with the Church. The enthusiasm 
for Christ sustained him in his struggle. Of the days before 
he withdrew from the Church he wrote : ' For two months 
I was a Protestant like a professor in Halle or Tiibingen.' 
French was at that time a language much better known in the 
world at large, particularly the English-speaking world, than 
was German. Renan's book had great art and charm. It 



128 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

took a place almost at once as a bit of world-literature. The 
number of editions in French and of translations into other 
languages is amazing. Beyond question, the critical position 
was made known through Renan to multitudes who would 
never have been reached by the German works which were 
really Renan's authorities. It is idle to say with Pfleiderer 
that it is a pity that, having possessed so much learning, 
Renan had not possessed more. That is not quite the point. 
The book has much breadth and solidity of learning. Yet 
Renan has scarcely the historian's quality. His work is a 
work of art. It has the halo of romance. Imagination and 
poetical feeling make it in a measure what it is. 

Renan was bom in 1823 in Treguier in Brittany. He set 
out for the priesthood, but turned aside to the study of 
oriental languages and history. He made long sojourn in 
the East. He spoke of Palestine as having been to him a 
fifth Gospel. He became Professor of Hebrew in the College 
de France. He was suspended from his office in 1863, and 
permitted to read again only in 1871. He had formally 
separated himself from the Roman Church in 1845. He was 
a member of the Academy. His diction is unsurpassed. 
He died in 1894. In his own phrase, he sought to bring 
Jesus forth from the darkness of dogma into the midst of the 
hfe of his people. He paints him first as an idyllic national 
leader, then as a struggling and erring hero, always aiming 
at the highest, but doomed to tragic failure through the resis- 
tance offered by reality to his ideal. He calls the traditional 
Christ an abstract being who never was alive. He would 
bring the marvellous human figure before our eyes. He 
heightens the brilliancy of his delineation by the deep shadows 
of mistakes and indiscretion upon Jesus' part. In some 
respects an epic or an historical romance, without teaching 
us history in detail, may yet enable us by means of the artist's 
intuition to realise an event or period, or make presentation 
to ourselves of a personality, better than the scant records 
acknowledged by the strict historian could ever do. 

Our materials for a real biography of Jesus are inade- 
quate. This was the fact which, by all these biographies 



IV.] THE CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL MOVEMENT 129 

of Jesus, was brought home to men's minds. Keim's 
book, the most learned of those mentioned, is hardly more 
than a vast collection of material for the history of Jesus' 
age, which has now been largely superseded by Schiirer's 
Geschichte des Judischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi, 2 
Bde., 1886-1890. There have been again, since the decade of 
the sixties, periods of approach to the great problem. Weiss 
and Beyschlag published at the end of the eighties lives of 
Jesus which, especially the former, are noteworthy in their 
treatment of the critical material. They do not for a moment 
face the question of the person of Christ. The same remark 
might be made, almost without exception, as to those lives of 
Jesus which have appeared in numbers in England and 
America. The best books of recent years are Albert Reville's 
Jesus de Nazareth, 1897, and Oscar Holtzmann's Leben Jesu, 
1901. So great are the difficulties and in such disheartening 
fashion are they urged from all sides, that one cannot with- 
hold enthusiastic recognition of the service which Holtzmann 
particularly has here rendered, in a calm, objective, and 
withal deeply devout handling of his theme. Meantime new 
questions have arisen, questions of the relation of Jesus to 
Messianism, like those touched upon by Wrede in his Das 
Messias Geheimniss in den Evangelien, 1901, and questions 
as to the eschatological trait in Jesus' own teaching. 
Schweitzer's book. Von Reimarus zu Wrede : eine Geschichte 
der Leben Jesu-Forschung, 1906, not merely sets forth this 
deeply interesting chapter in the history of the thought of 
modern men, but has also serious interpretative value in itself. 
For English readers Sanday's Life of Christ in Recent Research, 
1907, follows the descriptive aspect, at least, of the same 
purpose with Schweitzer's book, covering, however, only 
the last twenty years. 

It is characteristic that Ritschl, notwithstanding his em- 
phasis upon the historical Jesus, asserted the impossibility 
of a biography of Jesus. The understanding of Jesus is 
through faith. For Wrede, on the other hand, such a bio- 
graphy is impossible because of the nature of our sources. 
Not alone are they scant, but they are not biographicaL 

I 



130 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

They are apologetic, propagandist, interested in everything ex- 
cept those problems which a biographer must raise. The last 
few years have even conjured up the question whether Jesus 
ever lived. One may say with all simplicity, that the question 
has, of course, as much rightfulness as has any other question 
any man could raise. The somewhat extended discussion has, 
however, done nothing to make evident how it could arise, 
save in minds unfamiliar with the materials and unskilled 
in historical research. The conditions which beset us when 
we ask for a biography of Jesus that shall answer scientific 
requirement are not essentially different from those which 
meet us in the case of any other personage equally remote in 
point of time, and equally woven about — if any such have 
been — by the love and devotion of men. Bousset's httle 
book, Was Wissen wir von Jesus ? 1904, convinces a quiet 
mind that we know a good deal. Qualities in the personality 
of Jesus obviously worked in transcendent measure to call 
out devotion. No understanding of history is adequate 
which has no place for the unfathomed in personality. Exactly 
because we ourselves share this devotion, we could earnestly 
wish that the situation as to the biography of Jesus were 
other than it is. 

The Old Testament 

We have spoken thus far as if the whole bibKcal-critical 
problem had been that of the New Testament. In reality 
the same impulses which had opened up that question to the 
minds of men had set them working upon the problem of 
the Old Testament as well. We have seen how the Christians 
made for themselves a canon of the New Testament. By 
the force of that conception of the canon, and through the 
belief that, almost in a literal sense, God was the author of the 
whole book, the obvious differences among the writings had 
been obscured. Men forgot the evolution through which the 
writings had passed. The same thing had happened for the 
Old Testament in the Jewish synagogues and for the rabbis 
before the Christian movement. When the Christians took 



IV.] THE CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL MOVEMENT 131 

over the Old Testament they took it over in this sense. It 
was a closed book wherein all appreciation of the long road 
which the religion of Israel had traversed in its evolution 
had been lost. The relation of the old covenant to the new 
was obscured. The Old Testament became a Christian book. 
Not merely were the Christian facts prophesied in the Old 
Testament, but its doctrines also were implied. Almost do\\Ti 
to modern times texts have been drawn indifferently from 
either Testament to prove doctrine and sustain theology. 
Moses and Jesus, prophets and Paul, are cited to support an 
argument, without any sense of difference. What we have 
said is hardly more true of Augustine or Anselm than of the 
classic Puritan divines. This was the state of things which 
the critics faced. 

The Old Testament critical movement is a parallel at all 
points of the one which we have described in reference to the 
New. Of course, elder scholars, even Spinoza, had raised 
the question as to the Mosaic authorship of certain portions 
of the Pentateuch. Roman Catholic scholars in the seven- 
teenth century, for whom the stringent theory of inspiration 
had less significance than for Protestants, had set forth views 
which showed an awakening to the real condition. Yet, 
at the beginning of the nineteenth century, no one would have 
forecast a revolution in opinion which would recognise the 
legendary quality of considerable portions of the Pentateuch 
and historical books, which would leave but little that is of 
undisputed Mosaic authorship, which would place the prophets 
before the law, which would concede the growth of the Jewish 
canon, which would perceive the relation of Judaism to the 
religions of the other Semite peoples and would seek to 
establish the true relation of Judaism to Christianity. 

In the year 1835, the same year in which Strauss' Leben 
Jesu saw the light, Wilhelm Vatke published his Religion des 
Alien Testaments, Vatke was born in 1806, began to teach 
in Berlin in 1830, was professor extraordinarius there in 1837 
and died in 1882, not yet holding a full professorship. His 
book was obscurely written and scholastic. PubKc attention 
was largely occupied by the conflict which Strauss' work 



132 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

had caused. Reuss in Strassburg was working on the same 
lines, but pubUshed the main body of his results much later. 
The truth for which these scholars and others hke them 
argued, worked its way slowly by force of its own merit. 
Perhaps it was due to this fact that the development of Old 
Testament critical views was subject to a fluctuation less 
marked than that which characterised the case of the New 
Testament. It is not necessary to describe the earlier stages 
of the discussion in Vatke's own terms. To his honour be 
it said that the views which he thus early enunciated were in 
no small degree identical with those which were in masterful 
fashion substantiated in Holland by Kuenen about 1870, in 
Germany by Wellhausen after 1878, and made known to 
English readers by Robertson Smith in 1881. 

Budde has shown in his Kanon des Alien Testaments, 1900, 
that the Old Testament which lies before us finished and com- 
plete, assumed its present form only as the result of the 
growth of several centuries. At the beginning of this process 
of the canonisation stands that strange event, the sudden 
appearance of a holy book of the law under King Josiah, in 
621 B.C. The end of the process, through the decisions of the 
scribes, falls after the destruction of Jerusalem, possibly 
even in the second century. Lagarde seems to have proved 
that the rabbis of the second century succeeded in destroying 
all copies of the Scripture which differed from the standard 
then set up. This state of things has enormously increased 
a difficulty which was already great enough, that of the de- 
tection and separation of the various elements of which many 
of the books in this ancient literature are made up. Certain 
books of the New Testament also present the problem of 
the discrimination of elements of different ages, which have 
been wrought together into the documents as we now have 
them, in a way that almost defies our skill to disengage. 
The synoptic Gospels are, of course, the great example. The 
book of the Acts presents a problem of the same kind. But 
the Pentateuch, or rather Hexateuch, the historical books in 
less degree, the writings even of some of the prophets, the 
codes which formulate the law and ritual, are composites 



IV.] THE CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL MOVEMENT 133 

which have been whole centuries in the making and re- 
making. There was no such thing as right of authorship in 
ancient Israel, little of it in the ancient world at all. What 
was once written was popular or priestly property. Histories 
were newly narrated, laws enlarged and rearranged, pro- 
phecies attributed to conspicuous persons. All this took 
place not in deliberate intention to pervert historic truth, 
but because there was no interest in historic truth and no 
conception of it. The rewriting of a nation's history from the 
point of view of its priesthood bore, to the ancient Israelite, 
beyond question, an aspect altogether different from that 
which the same transaction would bear to us. The difficulty 
of the separation of these materials, great in any case, is 
enhanced by the fact alluded to, that we have none but 
internal evidence. The success of the achievement, and the 
unanimity attained with reference to the most significant 
questions, is one of the marvels of the life of learning of 
our age. 

In the Jewish tradition it had been assumed that the Mosaic 
law was written down in the wilderness. Then, in the times 
of the Judges and of the Kings, the historical books took 
shape, with David's Psalms and the wise words of Solomon. 
At the end of the period of the Kings we have the prophetic 
literature and finally Ezra and Nehemiah. De Wette had 
disputed this order, but Wellhausen in his Prolegomena zur 
Geschichte Israels, 1883, may be said to have proved that 
this view was no longer tenable. Men ask, could the law, 
or even any greater part of it, have been given to nomads in 
the wilderness ? Do not all parts of it assume a settled state 
of society and an agricultural life ? Do the historical books 
from Judges to the II. Kings know anything about the law ? 
Are the practices of worship which they imply consonant 
with the supposition that the law was in force ? How is 
it that the law appears both under Josiah, and again under 
Ezra, as something new, thus far unknown, and yet as ruling 
the religious life of the people from that day forth ? It seems 
impossible to escape the conclusion that only after Josiah's re- 
formation, more completely after the restoration under Ezra, 



134 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

did the religion of the law exist. The centrahsation of worship 
at one point, such as the book of Deuteronomy demands, 
seems to have been the thing achieved by the reform under 
Josiah. The estabhshment of the priestly hierarchy such 
as the code ordains was the issue of the religious revolution 
wrought in Ezra's time. To put it differently, the so-called 
Book of the Covenant, the nucleus of the law-giving, itself 
implies the multiplicity of the places of worship. Deutero- 
nomy demands the centralisation of the worship as something 
which is yet to take place. The priestly Code declares that 
the limitation of worship to one place was a fact already in 
the time of the journeys of Israel in the wilderness. It is 
assumed that the Hebrews in the time of Moses shared the 
almost universal worship of the stars. Moses may indeed 
have concluded a covenant between his people and Jahve, 
their God, hallowing the judicial and moral life of the people, 
bringing these into relation to the divine will. Jahve was a 
holy God whose will was to guide the people coming up out 
of the degradation of nature- worship. That part of the people 
held to the old nature- worship is evident in the time of Elijah. 
The history of Israel is not that of defection from a pure 
revelation. It is the history of a gradual attainment of purer 
revelation, of enlargement in the application of it, of discovery 
of new principles contained in it. It is the history also of 
the decline of spiritual religion. The zeal of the prophets 
against the ceremonial worship shows that. Their protest 
reveals at that early date the beginning of that antithesis 
which had become so sharp in Jesus' time. 

This determination of the relative positions of law and 
prophets was the first step in the reconstruction of the 
history, both of the nation of Israel and of its literature. 
At the beginning, as in every literature, are songs of war 
and victory, of praise and grief, hymns, even riddles and 
phrases of magic. Everywhere poetry precedes prose. Then 
come myths relating to the worsh^'p and tales of the fathers 
and heroes. Elements of both these sorts are embedded in 
the simple chronicles which began now to be written, primi- 
tive historical works, such as those of the Jahvist and 



IV.] THE CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL MOVEMENT 135 

Elohist, of the narrators of the deeds of the judges and of 
David and of Saul. Perhaps at this point belong the 
earliest attempts at fixing the tradition of family and clan 
rights, and of the regulation of personal conduct, as in the 
Book of the Covenant. Then comes the great outburst 
of the prophetic spirit, the preaching of an age of great 
religious revival. Then follows the law, with its minute regu- 
lation of all details of life upon which would depend the 
favour of the God who had brought punishment upon the 
people in the exile. The prophecy runs on into apocalyptic 
like that of the book of Daniel. The contact with the 
outside world makes possible a phase of literature such as 
that to which the books of Job and Ecclesiastes belong. The 
deepening of the inner life gave the world the lyric of the 
Psalms, some of which are credibly assigned to a period so 
late as that of the Maccabees. 

In this which has been said of the literature we have the clue 
also for the reconstruction of the nation's history. The naive 
assumption in the writing of all history had once been that 
one must begin with the beginning. But to Wellhausen, 
Stade, Eduard Meyer and Kittel and Cornill, it has been clear 
that the history of the earliest times is the most uncertain. 
It is the least adapted to furnish a secure point of departure 
for historical inquiry. There exist for it usually no con- 
temporary authorities, or only such as are of problematical 
worth. This earliest period constitutes a problem, the solution 
of which, so far as any solution is possible, can be hoped for 
only through approach from the side of ascertained facts. We 
must start from a period which is historically known. For 
the history of the Hebrews, this is the time of the first prophets 
of whom we have written records, or from whom we have 
written prophecies. We get from these, as also from the 
earliest direct attempts at history writing, only that conception 
of Israel's pre-historic life which was entertained in prophetic 
circles in the eighth century. We learn the heroic legends in 
the interpretation which the prophets put upon them. We 
have still to seek to interpret them for ourselves. We 
must begin in the middle and work both backward and 



136 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

forward. Such a view of the history of Israel affords every 
opportunity for the connecting of the history and rehgion 
of Israel with those of the other Semite stocks. Some of these 
have in recent years been discovered to offer extraordinary 
parallels to that which the Old Testament relates. 

The History of Doctrine 

When speaking of Baur's contribution to New Testament 
criticism, we alluded to his historical works. He was in a dis- 
tinct sense a reformer of the method of the writing of church 
history. To us the notions of the historical and of that which 
is genetic are identical. Of course, naive rehgious chronicles 
do not meet that test. A glance at the histories produced 
by the age of rationalism will show that these also fall short 
of it. The perception of the relativity of institutions like the 
papacy is here wholly wanting. Men and things are brought 
summarily to the bar of the wisdom of the author's year of 
grace. They are approved or condemned by this criterion. 
For Baur, all things had come to pass in the process of the 
great hfe of the world. There must have been a rationale 
of their becoming. It is for the historian with sympathy and 
imagination to find out what their inherent reason was. One 
other thing distinguishes Baur as church historian from his 
predecessors. He realised that before one can delineate one 
must investigate. One must go to the sources. One must 
estimate the value of these sources. One must have ground 
in the sources for every judgment. Baur was himself a great 
investigator. Yet the movement for the investigation of the 
sources of biblical and ecclesiastical history which his genera- 
tion initiated has gone on to such achievements that, in some 
respects, we can but view the foundations of Baur's own work 
as precarious, the results at which he arrived as unwarranted. 
New documents have come to light since his day. Forgeries 
have been proved to be such. The whole state of learning 
as to the hterature of the Christian origins has been vastly 
changed. There is still one other thing to say concerning 
Baur. He was a Hegelian. He has the disposition always 



IV.] THE CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL MOVEMENT 137 

to interpret the movements of the reHgious spirit in the sense 
of philosophical ideas. He frankly says that without specu- 
lation every historical investigation remains but a play upon 
the surface of things. Baur's fault was that in his search for, 
or rather in his confident discovery of, the great connecting 
forces of history, the biographical element, the significance 
of personality, threatened altogether to disappear. The force 
in the history was the absolute, the immanent divine will. 
The method everywhere was that of advance by contrasts 
and antagonisms. One gets an impression, for example, 
that the Nicene dogma became what it did by the might of 
the idea, that it could not by any possibility have had any 
other issue. 

The foil to much of this in Baur's own age was represented 
in the work of Neander, a converted Jew, professor of church 
history in Berlin, who exerted great influence upon a genera- 
tion of English and American scholars. He was not an inves- 
tigator of sources. He had no talent for the task. He was 
a delineator, one of the last of the great painters of history, 
if one may so describe the type. He had imagination, sym- 
pathy, a devout spirit. His great trait was his insight into 
personality. He wrote history with the biographical interest. 
He almost resolves history into a series of biographical types. 
He has too little sense for the connexion of things, for 
the laws of the evolution of the religious spirit. The great 
dramatic elements tend to disappear behind the emotions of 
individuals. The old delineators were before the age of in- 
vestigation. Since that impulse became masterful, some 
historians have been completely absorbed in the effort to 
make contribution to this investigation. Others, with a 
sense of the impossibility of mastering the results of investi- 
gation in all fields, have lost the zeal for the writing of church 
history on a great scale. They have contented themselves 
with producing monographs upon some particular subject, 
in which, at the most, they may hope to embody all that is 
known as to some specific question. 

We spoke above of the new conception of the relation of 
the canonical literature of the New Testament to the extra- 



138 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

canonical. We alluded to the new sense of the continuity of 
the history of the apostolic churches with that of the Church 
of the succeeding age. The influence of these ideas has been 
to set all problems here involved in a new hght. Until 1886 
it might have been said with truth that we had no good history 
of the apostolic age. In that year Weizsacker's book, Das 
Apostolische Zeitalter der ChristUchen Kirche, admirably filled 
the place. A part of the problem of the historian of the apostolic 
age is difficult for the same reason which was given when we 
were speaking of the biography of Jesus. Our materials are 
inadequate. First with the beginning of the activities of Paul 
have we sources of the first rank. The relation of statements 
in the Pauline letters to data in the book of the Acts was one 
of the earliest problems which the Tiibingen school set itself. 
An attempt to write the biography of Paul reminds us sharply 
of our limitations. We know almost nothing of Paul prior 
to his conversion, or subsequent to the enigmatical breaking 
off of the account of the beginnings of his work at Rome. 
Harnack's Mission und Aushreitung des Christenthums, 1902 
(translated, Moffatt, 1908), takes up the work of Paul's suc- 
cessors in that cardinal activity. It offers, strange as it may 
seem, the first discussion of the dissemination of Christianity 
which has dealt adequately with the sources. It gives also a 
picture of the world into which the Christian movement went. 
It emphasises anew the truth which has for a generation past 
grown in men's apprehension that there is no possibility of 
understanding Christianity, except against the background of 
the religious life and thought of the world into which it came. 
Christianity had vital relation, at every step of its progress, 
to the religious movements and impulses of the ancient 
world, especially in those centres of civilisation which Paul 
singled out for his endeavour and which remained the centres 
of the Christian growth. It was an age which has often been 
summarily described as corrupt. Despite its corruption, or 
possibly because it was corrupt, it gives evidence, however, 
of religious stirring, of strong ethical reaction, of spiritual 
endeavour rarely paralleled. In the Roman Empire 
everything travelled. Religions travelled. In the centres 



IV.] THE CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL MOVEMENT 139 

of civilisation there was scarcely a faith of mankind which 
had not its votaries. 

It was an age of religious syncretism, of hospitality to diverse 
religious ideas, of the commingling of those ideas. These 
things facilitated the progress of Christianity. They made 
certain that if the Christian movement had in it the divine 
vitality which men claimed, it would one day conquer the 
world. Equally, they made certain that, as the very condition 
of this conquest, Christianity would be itself transformed. 
This it is which has happened in the evolution of Christianity 
from its very earliest stages and in all phases of its life. Of 
any given rite, opinion or institution, of the many which have 
passed for almost two millenniums unchallenged under the 
Christian name, men about us are now asking : But how 
much of it is Christian ? In what measure have we to think 
of it as derived from some other source, and representing 
the accommodation and assimilation of Christianity to its 
environment in process of its work ? What is Christianity ? 
Not unnaturally the ancient Church looked with satisfaction 
upon the great change which passed over Christianity when 
Constantine suddenly made that which had been the faith of 
a despised and persecuted sect, the religion of the world. The 
Fathers can have thought thus only because their minds 
rested upon that which was outward and spectacular. Not 
unnaturally the metamorphosis in the inward nature of 
Christianity which had taken place a century and a quarter 
earlier was hidden from their eyes. In truth, by that earlier 
and subtler transformation Christianity had passed per- 
manently beyond the stage in which it had been prepon- 
derantly a moral and spiritual enthusiasm, with its centre 
and authority in the person of Jesus. It became a system 
and an institution, with a canon of New Testament Scripture, 
a monarchical organisation and a rule of faith which was 
formulated in the Apostles' Creed. 

To Baur the truth as to the conflict of Paul with the 
Judaisers had meant much. He thought, therefore, with 
reference to the rise of priesthood and ritual among the 
Christians, to the emphasis on Scripture in the fashion of the 



140 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

scribes, to the insistance upon rules and dogmas after the 
manner of the Pharisees, that they were but the evidence 
of the dechne and defeat of Paul's free spirit and of the 
resurgence of Judaism in Christianity. He sought to explain 
the rise of the episcopal organisation by the example of 
the synagogue. Ritschl in his Entstehung der alt'caiholisclien 
Kirche, 1857, had seen that Baur's theory could not be 
true. Christianity did not fall back into Judaism. It 
went forward to embrace the Hellenic and Roman world. 
The institutions, dogmas, practices of that which, after a.d. 
200, may with propriety be called the Catholic Church, are 
the fruit of that embrace. There was here a falhng off 
from primitive and spiritual Christianity. But it was not a 
falling back into Judaism. There were priests and scribes 
and Pharisees with other names elsewhere. The phenomenon 
of the waning of the original enthusiasm of a period of 
religious revelation has been a frequent one. Christianity on 
a grand scale illustrated this phenomenon anew. Hamack 
has elaborated this thesis with unexampled brilliancy and 
power. He has supported it with a learning in which he has 
no rival and with a religious interest which not even hostile 
critics would deny. The phrase, ' the Hellenisation of Chris- 
tianity,' might almost be taken as the motto of the work to 
which he owes his fame. 

Habnack 

Adolf Hamack was born in 1851 in Dorpat, in one of the 
Baltic provinces of Russia. His father, Theodosius Hamack, 
was professor of pastoral theology in the University of Dorpat. 
Hamack studied in Leipzig and began to teach there in 1874. 
He was called to the chair of church history in Giessen in 1879. 
In 1886 he removed to Marburg and in 1889 to Berlin. 
Hamack's earlier published work was almost entirely in the 
field of the study of the sources and materials of early church 
history. His first book, published in 1873, was an inquiry 
as to the sources for the history of Gnosticism. His Patrum 
Apostolicorum Opera^ 1876, prepared by him jointly with 



IV.] THE CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL MOVEMENT 141 

von Gebhardt and Zahn, was in a way only a forecast of the 
great collection, Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der 
alt-christUchen Literatur, begun in 1882, upon which numbers 
of scholars have worked together with him. The collection 
has already more than thirty-five volumes. In his own 
two works. Die Geschichte der alt-christlichen Literatur his 
Eusehius, 1893, and Die Chronologie der alt-christlichen 
Literatur bis Eusebius, 1897, are deposited the results of 
his reflexion on the mass of this material. His Beitrdge zur 
Einleitung in das Neue Testament, 1906, etc., should not be over- 
looked. He has had the good fortune to be among those who 
have discovered manuscripts of importance. He has had 
to do with the Prussian Academy's edition of the Greek 
Fathers. A list of his published works, which was prepared 
in connexion with the celebration of his sixtieth birthday in 
1911, bears witness to his amazing diligence and fertility. 
He was for thirty-five years associated with Schiirer in the 
publication of the Theologische Literaturzeitung. He has 
filled important posts in the Church and under the govern- 
ment. To this must be added an activity as a teacher which 
has placed a whole generation of students from every portion 
of the world under undying obligation. One speaks with 
reserve of the living, but surely no man of our generation has 
done more to make the history of which we write. 

Harnack's epoch-making work was his Lehrhuch der Dog- 
mengeschichte, 1886-88, fourth edition, 1910. The book met, 
almost from the moment of its appearance, with the realisa- 
tion of the magnitude of that which had been achieved. It 
rested upon a fresh and independent study of the sources. 
It departed from the mechanism which had made the old 
treatises upon the history of doctrine formal and lifeless. 
Harnack realised to the full how many influences other than 
theological had had part in the development of doctrine. He 
recognised the reaction of modes of life and practice, and of 
external circumstances on the history of thought. His history 
of doctrine has thus a breadth and human quality never 
before attained. Philosophy, worship, morals, the develop- 
ment of Church government and of the canon, the common 



142 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

interests and passions of the age and those of the individual 
participants, are all made tributary to his delineation. 

Harnack cannot share Baur's view that the triumph of the 
Logos-Christology at Nicaea and Chalcedon was inevitable. 
A certain historic naturalness of the movement he would 
concede, the world on which Christianity entered being what 
it was. He is aware, however, that many elements other 
than Christian have entered into the development. He has 
phrased his apprehension thus. That Hellenisation of Chris- 
tianity which Gnosticism represented, and against which, in 
this, its acute form, the Church contended was, after all, the 
same thing which, by slower process and more unconsciously, 
befell the Church itself. That pure moral enthusiasm and 
inspiration which had been the gist of the Christian move- 
ment, in its endeavour to appropriate the world, had been 
appropriated by the world in far greater measure than its 
adherents knew. It had taken up its mission to change the 
world. It had dreamed that while changing the world it had 
itself remained unchanged. The world was changed, the 
world of life, of feeling and of thought. But Christianity 
was also changed. It had conquered the world. It had no 
perception of the fact that it illustrated the old law that the 
conquered give laws to the conquerors. It had fused the 
ancient culture with the flame of its inspiration. It did not 
appreciate the degree in which the elements of that ancient 
culture now coloured its far-shining flame. It had been a 
maker of history. Meantime it had been unmade and remade 
by its own history. It confidently carried back its canon, 
dogma, organisation, ritual to Christ and the apostles. It 
did not realise that the very fact that it could find these things 
natural and declare them ancient, proved with conclusiveness 
that it had itself departed from the standard of Christ and 
the apostles. It esteemed that these were its defences against 
the world. It little dreamed that they were, by their very 
existence, the evidence of the fact that the Church had not 
defended itself against the world. Its dogma was the Helleni- 
sation of its thought. Its organisation was the Romanising of 
its life. Its canon and ritual were the externalising, and 



IV.] THE CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL MOVEMENT 143 

conventionalising of its spirit and enthusiasm. These are 
positive and constructive statements of Harnack's main 
position. 

When, however, they are turned about and stated negatively, 
these statements all convey, more or less, the impression 
that the advance of Christianity had been its destruction, and 
the evolution of dogma had been a defection from Christ. This 
is the aspect of the contention which gave hostile critics 
opportunity to say that we have before us the history of the 
loss of Christianity. Hamack himself has many sentences 
which superficially will bear that construction. Hatch had 
said in his brilliant book, The Influence of Greek Ideas and 
Usages upon the Christian Church, 1891, that the domestication 
of Greek philosophy in the Church signified a defection from 
the Sermon on the Mount. The centre of gravity of the 
Gospel was changed from life to doctrine, from morals to 
metaphysics, from goodness to orthodoxy. The change was 
portentous. The aspect of pessimism is, however, removed 
when one recognises the inevitableness of some such process, 
if Christianity was ever to wield an influence in the world 
at all. Again, one must consider that the process of the 
recovery of pure Christianity must begin at exactly this point, 
namely, with the recognition of how much in current Chris- 
tianity is extraneous. It must begin with the sloughing off 
of these extraneous elements, with the recovery of the sense 
for that which original Christianity was. Such a recovery 
would be the setting free again of the power of the religion 
itself. 

The constant touchstone and point of reference for every 
stage of the history of the Church must be the gospel of Jesus. 
But what was the gospel of Jesus ? In what way did the 
very earliest Christians apprehend that gospel ? This ques- 
tion is far more difficult for us to answer than it was for those 
to whom the New Testament was a closed body of literature, 
externally differentiated from all other, and with a miraculous 
inspiration extending uniformly to every phrase in any book. 
These men would have said that they had but to find the 
proper combination of the sacred phrases. But we acknow- 



144 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

ledge that the central inspiration was the personality of Jesus. 
The books possess this inspiration in varying degree. Certain 
of the books have distinctly begun the fusion of Christian with 
other elements. They themselves represent the first stages 
of the history of doctrine. We acknowledge that those 
utterances of Jesus which have been preserved for us, shaped 
themselves by the antitheses in which Jesus stood. There 
is much about them that is palpably incidental, practically 
relevant and unquestionably only relative. In a large sense, 
much of the meaning of the gospel has to be gathered out of 
the evidence of the operation of its spirit in subsequent ages 
of the Christian Church, and from remoter aspects of the 
influence of Jesus on the world. Thus the very conception 
of the gospel of Jesus becomes inevitably more or less sub- 
jective. It becomes an ideal construction. The identification 
of this ideal with the original gospel proclamation becomes 
precarious. We seem to move in a circle. We derive the 
ideal from the history, and then judge the history by the ideal. 
Is there any escape from this situation, short of the return 
to the authority of Church or Scripture in the ancient sense ? 
Furthermore, even the men to whom the gospel was in the 
strictest sense a letter, identified the gospel with their own 
private interpretation of this letter. Certainly the followers 
of Ritschl who will acknowledge no traits of the gospel save 
those of which they find direct witness in the Gospels, thus 
ignore that the Gospels are themselves interpretations. This 
undue stress upon the documents which we are fortunate 
enough to possess, makes us forget the limitations of these 
documents. We tend thus to exaggerate that which must 
be only incidental, as, for example, the Jewish element, in 
the teaching of Jesus. We thus underrate phases of Jesus' 
teaching which, no doubt, a man like Paul would have appre- 
hended better than did the evangelists themselves. In truth, 
in Hamack's own delineation of the teaching of Jesus, those 
elements of it which found their way to expression in Paul, or 
again in the fourth Gospel, are rather underrated than over- 
stated, in the author's anxiety to exclude elements which are 
acknowledged to be interpretative in their nature. We are 



IV.] THE CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL MOVEMENT 145 

driven, in some measure, to seek to find out what the gospel 
was from the way in which the earUest Christians took it up. 
We return ever afresh to questions nearly unanswerable from 
the materials at hand. What was the central principle in the 
shaping of the earliest stages of the new community, both 
as to its thought and life ? Was it the longing for the coming 
of the Kingdom of God, the striving after the righteousness 
of the Sermon on the Mount ? Or was it the faith of the 
Messiah, the reverence for the Messiah, directed to the person 
of Jesus ? What word dominated the preaching ? Was it 
that the Kingdom of God was near, that the Son of Man 
would come ? Or was it that in Jesus Messiah has come ? 
What was the demand upon the hearer ? Was it. Repent, 
or was it. Believe on the Lord Jesus, or was it both, and 
which had the greater emphasis ? Was the name of Jesus 
used in the formulas of worship before the time of Paul ? 
What do we know about prayer in the name of Jesus, or 
baptism in that name, or miracles in the name of Jesus, 
or of the Lord's Supper and the conception of the Lord as 
present with his disciples in the rite ? Was this revering of 
Jesus, which was fast moving toward a worship of him, the 
inner motive force of the whole construction of the dogma 
of his person and of the trinity ? 

In the second volume Harnack treats of the development 
primarily of the Christological and trinitarian dogma, from 
the fourth to the seventh centuries. The dramatic interest 
of the narrative exceeds anything which has been written 
on this theme. A debate which to most modern men is 
remote and abstruse almost to the point of unintelligibility, 
and of which many of the external aspects are disheartening 
in the extreme, is here brought before us in something of the 
reasonableness which it must have had for those who took 
part in it. TertuUian shaped the problem and established 
the nomenclature for the Christological solution which the 
Orient two hundred years later made its own. It was he 
who, from the point of view of the jurist, rather than of the 
philosopher, gave the w^ords ' person ' and * substance,' which 
continually occur in this discussion, the meaning which in the 

K 



146 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

Nicene Creed they bear. Most brilliant is Hamack's charac- 
terisation of Arius and Athanasius. In Arius the notion of 
the Son of God is altogether done away. Only the name 
remains. The victory of Arianism would have resolved 
Christianity into cosmology and formal ethics. It would have 
destroyed it as religion. Yet the perverse situation into 
which the long and fierce controversy had drifted cannot be 
better illustrated than by one undisputed fact. Athanasius, 
who assured for Christianity its character as a religion of the 
living communion of God with man, is yet the theologian in 
whose Christology almost every possible trace of the recol- 
lection of the historic Jesus has disappeared. The purpose of 
the redemption is to bring men into community of life with 
God. But Athanasius apprehended this redemption as a con- 
ferment, from without and from above, of a divine nature. 
He subordinated everything to this idea. The whole narra- 
tive concerning Jesus falls under the interpretation that the 
only quality requisite for the Redeemer in his work was the 
possession in all fulness of the divine nature. His incarnation, 
his manifestation in real human life, held fast to in word, is 
reduced to a mere semblance. Salvation is not an ethical 
process, but a miraculous bestowment. The Christ, who 
was God, Ufts men up to godhood. They become God. 
These phrases are of course capable of ethical and intelligible 
meaning. The development of the doctrine, however, threw 
the emphasis upon the metaphysical and miraculous aspects 
of the work. It gloried in the fact that the presence of divine 
and human, two natures in one person forever, was unin- 
telligible. In the end it came to the pass that the enthusiastic 
assent to that which defied explanation became the very 
mark of a humble and submissive faith. One reads the 
so-called Athanasian Creed, and hears the ring of its deter- 
mination to exact assent. It had long since been clear to 
these Catholics and churchmen that, with the mere authority 
of Scripture, it was not possible to defend Christianity against 
the heretics. The heretics read their heresies out of the 
Bible. The orthodox read orthodoxy from the same page. 
Marcion had proved that, in the very days when the canon 



IV.] THE CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL MOVEMENT 147 

took its shape. There must be an authority to define the 
interpretation of the Scripture. Those who would share 
the benefits which the Church dispensed must assent uncon- 
ditionally to the terms of membership. 

All these questions were veiled for the early Christians 
behind the question of the kind of Christ in whom their hearts 
believed. With all that we have said about the reprehensible 
admixture of the metaphysical element in the dogma, with 
all the accusation which we bring concerning acute or gradual 
Hellenisation, secularisation and defection from the Christ, 
we ought not to hide from ourselves that in this gigantic 
struggle there were real religious interests at stake, and that 
for the men of both parties. Dimly, or perhaps vividly, 
the man of either party felt that the conception of the 
Christ which he was fighting for was congruous with the 
conception of religion which he had, or felt that he must 
have. It is this religious issue, everywhere present, which 
gives dignity to a struggle which otherwise does often sadly 
lack it. There are two religious views of the person of 
Christ which have stood, from the beginning, the one over 
against the other. ^ The one saw in Jesus of Nazareth a 
man, distinguished by his special calling as the Messianic 
King, endued with special powers, lifted above all men 
ever known, yet a man, completely subject to God in faith, 
obedience and prayer. This view is surely sustained by 
many of Jesus' own words and deeds. It shines through 
the testimony of the men who followed him. Even the 
belief in his resurrection and his second coming did not 
altogether do away with it. The other view saw in him 
a new God who, descending from God, brought mysterious 
powers for the redemption of mankind into the world, and 
after short obscuring of his glory, returned to the abode 
of God, where he had been before. From this belief come 
all the hymns and prayers to Jesus as to God all miracles 
and exorcisms in his name. 

In the long run, the simpler view did not maintain itself. 
If false gods and demons were expelled, it was the God 

1 Wernle, Einfuhrung in das Theologische Studium, 1908, s. 204, 



148 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [c3H. 

Jesus who expelled them. The more modest faith believed 
that in the man Jesus, being such an one as he was, men had 
received the greatest gift which the love of God had to bestow. 
In turn the believer felt the assurance that he also was a 
child of God, and in the spirit of Jesus was to realise that 
sonship. Syncretist religions suggested other thoughts. We 
see that already even in the synoptic tradition the calling 
upon the name of Jesus had found place. One wonders 
whether that first apprehension ever stood alone in its 
purity. The Gentile Churches founded by Paul, at all events, 
had no such simple trust. Equally, the second form of faith 
seems never to have been able to stand alone in its peculiar 
quality. Some of the gnostic sects had it. Marcion again 
is our example. The new God Jesus had nothing to do with 
the cruel God of the Old Testament. He supplanted the old 
God and became the only God. In the Church the new God, 
come down from heaven, must be set in relation with the long- 
known God of Israel. No less, must he stand in relation 
to the simple hero of the Gospels with his human traits. 
The problem of theological reflexion was to find the right 
middle course, to keep the divine Christ in harmony, on 
the one side, with monotheism, and on the other, with the 
picture which the Gospels gave. Belief knew nothing of 
these contradictions. The same simple soul thanked God 
for Jesus with his sorrows and his sympathy, as man's guide 
and helper, and again prayed to Jesus because he seemed 
too wonderful to be a man. The same kind of faith achieves 
the same wondering and touching combination to-day, after 
two thousand years. With thought comes trouble. Re- 
flexion wears itself out upon the insoluble difiiculty, the 
impossible combination, the flat contradiction, which the 
two views present, so soon as they are clearly seen. 

In the earliest Christian writings the fruit of this reflexion 
lies before us in this form : — The Creator of worlds, the 
mediator, the lord of angels and demons, the Logos which 
was God and is our Saviour, was yet a humble son of man, 
imdergoing suffering and death, having laid aside his divine 
glory. This picture is made with materials which the 



IV.] THE CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL MOVEMENT 149 

canonical writings themselves afford. Theological study had 
henceforth nothing to do but to avoid extremes and seek 
to make this image, which reflexion upon two polar op- 
posites had yielded, as nearly thinkable as possible. It has 
been said that the trinitarian doctrine is not in the New 
Testament, that it was later elaborated by a different kind 
of mind. This is not true. But the inference is precisely 
the contrary of that which defenders of the dogma would 
formerly have dravm from this concession. The same kind 
of mind, or rather the same two kinds of mind, are at work 
in the New Testament. Both of the religious elements 
above suggested are in the Gospels and Epistles. The 
New Testament presents attempts at their combination. 
Either form may be found in the literature of the later 
age. If we ask ourselves, What is that in Jesus which 
gives us the sense of redemption, surely we should answer. 
It is his glad and confident resting in the love of God 
the Father. It is his courage, his faith in men, which 
becomes our faith in ourselves. It is his wonderful mingling 
of purity and love of righteousness with love of those who 
have sinned. You may find this in the ancient literature, 
as the Fathers describe that to which their souls cling. But 
this is not the point of view from which the dogma is organised. 
The Nicene Christology is not to be understood from this 
approach. The cry of a dying civilisation after power and 
light and life, the feeling that these might come to it, 
streaming down as it were, from above, as a physical, a 
mechanical, a magical deliverance, this is the frame within 
which is set what is here said of the help and redemption 
wrought by Christ. The resurrection and the incarnation 
are the points at which this streaming in of the divine light 
and power upon a darkened world is felt. 

That religion seemed the highest, that interpretation of 
Christianity the truest, the absolute one, which could boast 
that it possessed the power of the Almighty through his 
physical union with men. He who contended that Jesus was 
God, contended therewith for a power which could come 
upon men and make them in some sense one with God. This 



150 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

is the view which has been almost exclusively held in the 
Greek Church. It is the view which has run under and 
through and around the other conception in the Roman and 
Protestant Churches. The sense that salvation is inward, 
moral, spiritual, has rarely indeed been absent from Christen- 
dom. It would be preposterous to allege that it had. Yet 
this sense has been overlaid and underrun and shot through 
with that other and disparate idea of salvation, as of a pure 
bestowment, something achieved apart from us, or, if one 
may so say, some alteration of ourselves upon other than 
moral and spiritual terms. The conception of the person 
Christ shows the same uncertainty. Or rather, with a given 
view of the nature of religion and salvation, the corre- 
sponding view of Christ is certain. In the age-long and 
world-wide contest over the trinitarian formula, with all 
that is saddening in the struggle and all that was mislead- 
ing in the issue, it is because we see men strugghng to come 
into the clear as to these two meanings of religion, that 
the contest has such absorbing interest. Men have been 
right in decUning to call that religion in which a man saves 
himself. They have been wrong in esteeming that they 
were then only saved of God or Christ when they were 
saved by an obviously external process. Even this antinomy 
is softened when one no longer holds that God and men are 
mutually exclusive conceptions. It is God working within 
us who saves, the God who in Jesus worked such a wonder 
of righteousness and love as else the world has never seen. 



v.] NATURAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 151 



CHAPTER V 

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE NATURAL AND SOCIAL 
SCIENCES 

By the middle of the nineteenth century the empirical sciences 
had undergone vast expansion in the study of detail and in 
the discovery of principles. Men felt the necessity of some 
adequate discussion of the relation of these sciences one to 
another and of their unity. There was need of the organisa- 
tion of the mass of knowledge, largely new and ever increas- 
ing, which the sciences furnished. It lay in the logic of the 
case that some of these attempts should advance the bold 
claim to deal with all knowledge whatsoever and to offer 
a theory of the universe as a whole. Religion, both in its 
mythological and in its theological stages, had offered a theory 
of the universe as a whole. The great metaphysical systems 
had offered theories of the universe as a whole. Both had 
professed to include all facts. Notoriously both theology and 
metaphysics had dealt in most inadequate fashion with the 
material world, in the study of which the sciences were now 
achieving great results. Indeed, the methods current and 
authoritative with theologians and metaphysicians had 
actually prevented study of the physical universe. Both of 
these had invaded areas of fact to which their methods had 
no application and uttered dicta which had no relation to 
truth. The very life of the sciences depended upon deliverance 
from this bondage. The record of that deliverance is one of 
the most dramatic chapters in the history of thought. Could 
one be surprised if, in the resentment which long oppression 
had engendered and in the joy which overwhelming victory 
had brought, scientific men now invaded the fields of their 
opponents? They repaid their enemies in their own coin. 



152 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

There was with some a disposition to deny that there exists 
an area of knowledge to which the methods of metaphysicians 
and theologians might apply. This was Comte's contention. 
Others conceded that there might be such an area, but claimed 
that we can have no knowledge of it. Even the theologians, 
after their first shock, were disposed to concede that, concern- 
ing the magnitudes in which they were most interested, as 
for example, God and soul, we have no knowledge of the sort 
which the method of the physical sciences would give. They 
fell back upon Kant's distinction of the two reasons and two 
worlds. They exaggerated the sharpness of that distinction. 
They learned that the claim of agnosticism was capable of 
being viewed as a line of defence, behind which the transcen- 
dental magnitudes might be secure. Indeed, if one may take 
Spencer as an example, it is not certain that this was not 
the intent of some of the scientists in their strong assertion 
of agnosticism. Spencer's later work reveals that he had no 
disposition to deny that there are foundations for belief in 
a world lying behind the phenomenal, and from which the 
latter gets its meaning. 

Meantime, after positivism was buried and agnosticism 
dead, a thing was achieved for which Comte himself laid 
the foundation and in which Spencer as he grew older was 
ever more deeply interested. This was the great develop- 
ment of the social sciences. Every aspect of the Ufe of man, 
including religion itself, has been drawn within the area of the 
social sciences. To all these subjects, including religion, there 
have been applied empirical methods which have the closest 
analogy with those which have reigned in the physical sciences. 
Psychology has been made a science of experiment, and the 
psychology of religion has been given a place within the area 
of its observations and generalisations. The ethical, and 
again the religious consciousness has been subjected to the 
same kind of investigation to which all other aspects of con- 
sciousness are subjected. Effort has been made to ascertain 
and classify the phenomena of the religious life of the race in 
all lands and in all ages. A science of religions is taking 
its place among the other sciences. It is as purely an 



v.] NATURAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 153 

inductive science as is any other. The history of reUgions 
and the philosophy of reUgion are being rewritten from this 
point of view. 

In the first hnes of this chapter we spoke of the empirical 
sciences, meaning the sciences of the material world. It is 
clear, however, that the sciences of mind, of morals and of 
religion have now become empirical sciences. They have 
their basis in experience, the experience of individuals and 
the experience of masses of men, of ages of observable human 
life. They all proceed by the method of observation and 
inference, of hypothesis and verification. There is a unity 
of method as between the natural and social and psychical 
sciences, the reach of which is startling to reflect upon. Indeed, 
the physiological aspects of psychology, the investigations of 
the relation of adolescence to conversion, suggest that the dis- 
tinction between the physical and the psychical is a vanishing 
distinction. Science comes nearer to offering an interpretation 
of the universe as a whole than the opening paragraphs of this 
chapter would imply. But it does so by including religion, 
not by excluding it. No one would any longer think of citing 
Kant's distinction of two reasons and two worlds in the sense 
of establishing a city of refuge into which the persecuted 
might flee. Kant rendered incomparable service by making 
clear two poles of thought. Yet we must realise how the 
space between is filled with the gradations of an absolute 
continuity of activity. Man has but one reason. This may 
conceivably operate upon appropriate material in one or the 
other of these polar fashions. It does operate in infinite 
variations of degree, in unity with itself, after both fashions, 
at all times and upon all materials. 

Positivism was a system. Agnosticism was at least a phase 
of thought. The broadening of the conception of science 
and the invasion of every area of life by a science thus broadly 
conceived, has been an influence less tangible than those others 
but not, therefore, less effective. Positivism was bitterly 
hostile to Christianity, though, in the mind of Comte himself 
and of a few others, it produced a curious substitute, possess- 
ing many of the marks of Roman Catholicism. The name 



154 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

* agnostic ' was so loosely used that one must say that the con- 
tention was hostile to religion in the minds of some and not 
of others. The new movement for an inclusive science is not 
hostile to religion. Yet it will transform current conceptions 
of religion as those others never did. In proportion as it is 
scientific it cannot be hostile. It may at most be indifferent. 
Nevertheless, in the long run, few will choose the theme of 
religion for the scientific labour of Hfe who have not some 
interest in religion. Men of these three classes have accepted 
the doctrine of evolution. Comte thought he had discovered 
it. Spencer and those for whom we have taken him as type, 
did service in the elaboration of it. To the men of our third 
group, the truth of evolution seems no longer debatable. 
Here too, in the word ' evolution,' we have a term which has 
been used with laxity. It corresponds to a notion which 
has only gradually been evolved. Its implications were at 
first by no means understood. It was associated with a 
mechanical view of the universe which was diametrically 
opposed to its truth. Still, there could not be a doubt that 
the doctrine contravened those ideas as to the origin of 
the world, and more particularly of man, of the relations of 
species, and especially of the human species to other forms 
of animal life, which had immemorially prevailed in Christian 
circles and which had the witness of the Scriptures on their 
behalf. If we were to attempt, with acknowledged latitude, 
to name a book whose import might be said to be cardinal 
for the whole movement treated of in this chapter, that book 
would be Darwin's Origin of Species, which was published 
in 1859. 

Long before Darwin the creation legend had been recog- 
nised as such. The astronomy of the seventeenth century 
had removed the earth from its central position. The geology 
of the eighteenth had shown how long must have been the 
ages of the laying down of the earth's strata. The question of 
the descent of man, however, brought home the significance 
of evolution for religion more forcibly than any other aspect 
of the debate had done. There were scientific men of dis- 
tinction who were not convinced of the truth of the evolu- 



v.] NATURAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 155 

tionary hypothesis. To most Christian men the theory seemed 
to leave no unique distinction or spiritual quality for man. 
It seemed to render impossible faith in the Scriptures as 
revelation. To many it seemed that the whole issue as 
between a spiritual and a purely materialistic view of the 
universe was involved. Particularly was this true of the 
English-speaking peoples. 

One other factor in the transformation of the Christian view 
needs to be dwelt upon. It is less theoretical than those upon 
which we have dwelt. It is the influence of socialism, taking 
that word in its largest sense. An industrial civilisation has 
developed both the good and the evil of individualism in in- 
credible degree. The unity of society which the feudal system 
and the Church gave to Europe in the Middle Age had been 
destroyed. The individualism and democracy which were 
essential to Protestantism notoriously aided the civil and 
social revolution, but the centrifugal forces were too great. 
Initiative has been wonderful, but cohesion is lacking. Demo- 
cracy is yet far from being realised. The civil liberations 
which were the great crises of the western world from 1640 to 
1830 appear now to many as deprived of their fruit. Govern- 
ments undertake on behalf of subjects that which formerly 
no government would have dreamed of doing. The demand 
is that the Church, too, become a factor in the furtherance of 
the outward and present welfare of mankind. If that meant 
the call to love and charity it would be an old refrain. That 
is exactly what it does not mean. It means the attack upon 
evils which make charity necessary. It means the taking 
up into the idealisation of religion the endeavour to redress 
all wrongs, to do away with all evils, to confer all goods, to 
create a new world and not, as heretofore, mainly at least, 
a new soul in the midst of the old world. No one can deny 
either the magnitude of the evils which it is sought to remedy, 
or the greatness of the goal which is thus set before religion. 
The volume of religious and Christian literature devoted to 
these social questions is immense. It is revolutionary in its 
effect. For, after all, the very gist of religion has been held 
to be that it deals primarily with the inner life and the tran- 



156 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

scendent world. That it has dealt with the problem of the 
inner life and transcendent world in such a manner as to 
retard, or even only not to further, the other aspects of man's 
life is indeed a grave indictment. That it should, however, 
see ends in the outer Ufe and present world as ends fully 
suJBQcient in themselves, that it should cease to set these in 
the light of the eternal, is that it should cease to be re- 
ligion. The physical and social sciences have given to men an 
outward setting in the world, a basis of power and happiness 
such as men never have enjoyed. Yet the tragic failure of 
our civilisation to give to vast multitudes that power and 
happiness, is the proof that something more than the outward 
basis is needed. The success of our civilisation is its failure. 
This is by no means a recurrence to the old antithesis of 
religion and civilisation, as if these were contradictory ele- 
ments. On the contrary, it is but to show that the present 
world of religion and of economics are not two worlds, but 
merely different aspects of the same world. Therewith it is not 
alleged that religion has not a specific contribution to make. 

Positivism 

The permanent influence of that phase of thought which 
called itself Positivism has not been great. But a school of 
thought which numbered among its adherents such men and 
women as John Stuart Mill, George Henry Lewes, George 
Eliot, Frederic Harrison, and Matthew Arnold, cannot be said 
to have been without significance. A book upon the trans- 
lation of which Harriet Martineau worked with sustained 
enthusiasm cannot be dismissed as if it were merely a curiosity. 
Comte's work, Cours de Philosophie Positive, appeared between 
the years 1830 and 1842. Littre was his chief French inter- 
preter. But the history of the positivist movement belongs 
to the history of English philosophical and religious thought, 
rather than to that of France. 

Comte was bom at Montpellier in 1798, of a family of in- 
tense Roman Catholic piety. He showed at school a pre- 
cocity which might bear comparison with Mill's. Expelled 



v.] NATURAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 157 

from school, cast off by his parents, dismissed by the elder 
Casimir Perier, whose secretary he had been, he eked out a 
living by tutoring in mathematics. Friends of his philosophy 
rallied to his support. He never occupied a post comparable 
with his genius. He was unhappy in his marriage. He 
passed through a period of mental aberration, due, perhaps, 
to the strain under which he worked. He did not regain his 
liberty without an experience which embittered him against 
the Church. During the fourteen years of the production 
of his book he cut himself off from any reading save that of 
current scientific discovery. He came under the influence of 
Madame Vaux, whom, after her death, he idolised even more 
than before. For the problem which, in the earlier portion 
of his work, he set himself, that namely, of the organising of 
the sciences into a compact body of doctrine, he possessed 
extraordinary gifts. Later, he took on rather the air of a 
high priest of humanity, legislating concerning a new religion. 
It is but fair to say that at this point Littre and many others 
parted company with Comte. He developed a habit and 
practice ascetic in its rigour and mystic in its devotion to the 
positivists' religion — the worship of humanity. He was the 
friend and counsellor of working-men and agitators, of little 
children, of the poor and miserable. He ended his rather 
pathetic and turbulent career in 1857, gathering a few dis- 
ciples about his bed as he remembered that Socrates had 
done. 

Comte begins with the natural sciences and postulates the 
doctrine of evolution. To the definition of this doctrine he 
makes some interesting approaches. The discussion of the 
order and arrangement of the various sciences and of their 
characteristic differences is wonderful in its insight and 
suggestiveness. He asserts that in the study of nature we 
are concerned solely with the facts before us and the relations 
which connect those facts. We have nothing to do with 
the supposed essence or hidden nature and meaning of those 
facts. Facts and the invariable laws which govern them 
are the only legitimate objects of pursuit. Comte infers that 
because we can know, in this sense, only phenomena and their 



158 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

relations, we should in consequence guard against illusions 
which creep in again if we so much as use the words principle, 
or cause, or will, or force. By phenomena must be understood 
objects of perception, to the exclusion, for example, of psycho- 
logical changes reputed to be known in self-consciousness. 
That there is no knowledge but of the physical, that there is 
no knowing except by perception — this is ever reiterated as 
self-evident. Even psychology, resting as it does largely 
upon the observation of the self by the self, must be illusive. 
Physiology, or even phrenology, with the value of which 
Comte was much impressed, must take its place. Every 
object of knowledge is other than the knowing subject. What- 
ever else the mind knows, it can never know itself. By in- 
vincible necessity the human mind can observe all phenomena 
except its own. Commenting upon this, James Martineau 
observed : ' We have had in the history of thought numerous 
forms of idealism which construed all outward phenomena 
as mere appearances within the mind. We have hitherto 
had no strictly corresponding materialism, which claimed 
certainty for the outer world precisely because it was foreign 
to ourselves.' Man is the highest product of nature, the 
highest stage of nature's most mature and complex form. 
Man as individual is nothing more. Physiology gives us not 
merely his external constitution and one set of relations. It 
is the whole science of man. There is no study of mind in 
which its actions and states can be contemplated apart from 
the physical basis in conjunction with which mind exists. 

Thus far man has been treated only biologically, as in- 
dividual. We must advance to man in society. Almost one 
half of Comte's bulky work is devoted to this side of the 
inquiry. Social phenomena are a class complex beyond any 
which have yet been investigated. So much is this the case 
and so difficult is the problem presented, that Comte felt 
constrained in some degree to change his method. We 
proceed from experience, from data in fact, as before. But 
the facts are not mere illustrations of the so-called laws of 
individual human nature. Social facts are the results also of 
situations which represent the accumulated influence of past 



r.] NATURAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 159 

generations. In this, as against Bentham, for example, with 
his endless recurrence to human nature, as he called it, 
Comte was right. Comte thus first gave the study of history- 
its place in sociology. In this study of history and sociology, 
the collective phenomena are more accessible to us and 
better known by us, than are the parts of which they are 
composed. We therefore proceed here from the general to 
the particular, not from the particular to the general, as 
in research of the kinds previously named. The state of every 
part of the social organisation is intimately connected with 
the contemporaneous state of all the other parts. Philosophy, 
science, the fine arts, commerce, navigation, government, are 
all in close mutual dependence. When any considerable 
change takes place in one, we may know that a parallel change 
has preceded or will follow in the others. The progress of 
society is not the aggregate of partial changes, but the product 
of a single impulse acting through all the partial agencies. 
It can therefore be most easily traced by studying all 
together. These are the main principles of sociological in- 
vestigation as set forth by Comte, some of them as they have 
been phrased by Mill. 

The most sweeping exemplification of the axiom last 
alluded to, as to parallel changes, is Comte's so-called law 
of the three states of civilisation. Under this law, he asserts, 
the whole historical evolution can be summed up. It is as 
certain as the law of gravitation. Everything in human 
society has passed, as has the individual man, through the 
theological and then through the metaphysical stage, and so 
arrives at the positive stage. In this last stage of thought 
nothing either of superstition or of speculation will survive. 
Theology and metaphysics Comte repeatedly characterises as 
the two successive stages of nescience, unavoidable as pre- 
ludes to science. Equally unavoidable is it that science shall 
ultimately prevail in their place. The advance of science 
having once begun, there is no possibility but that it will 
ultimately possess itself of all. One hears the echo of this 
confidence in Haeckel also. There is a persistence about 
the denial of any knowledge whatsoever that goes beyond 



160 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [CH, 

external facts, which ill comports with the pretensions of 
positivism to be a philosophy. For its final claim is not 
that it is content to rest in experimental science. On the 
contrary, it would transform this science into a homogeneous 
doctrine which is able to explain everything in the universe. 
This is but a tour de force. The promise is fulfilled through 
the denial of the reality of everything which science cannot 
explain. Comte was never willing to face the fact that the 
very existence of knowledge has a noumenal as well as a 
phenomenal side. The reasonableness of the universe is 
certainly a conception which we bring to the observation of 
nature. If we did not thus bring it with us, no mere obser- 
vation of nature would ever give it to us. It is impossible for 
science to get rid of the conception of force, and ultimately 
of cause. There can be no phenomenon which is not a mani- 
festation of something. The very nomenclature falls into 
hopeless confusion without these conceptions. Yet the 
moment we touch them we transcend science and pass into 
the realm of philosophy. It is mere juggling with words to 
say that our science has now become a philosophy. 

The adjective * positive ' contains the same fallacy. Appar- 
ently Comte meant by the choice of it to convey the sense that 
he would hmit research to phenomena in their orders of resem- 
blance, co-existence and succession. But to call the inquiry 
into phenomena positive, in the sense that it alone deals with 
reality, to imply that the inquiry into causes deals with that 
which has no reality, is to beg the question. This is not a 
premise with which he may set out in the evolution of his 
system. 

Comte denied the accusation of materialism and atheism. 
He did the first only by changing the meaning of the term 
materialism. Materialism the world has supposed to be the 
view of man's condition and destiny which makes these to 
begin and end in nature. That certainly was Comte's view. 
The accusation of atheism also he avoids by a mere play on 
words. He is not without a God. Humanity is God. Man- 
kind is the positivist's Supreme. Altruism takes the place of 
devotion. The devotion so long wasted upon a mere creature 



v.] NATURAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 161 

of the imagination, to whom it could do no good, he would now 
give to men who sorely need it and can obviously profit by it. 
Surely the antithesis between nature and the supernatural, 
in the form in which Comte argues against it, is now 
abandoned by thoughtful people. Equally the antithesis of 
altruism to the service of God is perverse. It arouses one's 
pity that Comte should not have seen how, in true religion 
these two things coalesce. 

Moreover, this deification of mankind, in so far as it is not 
a sounding phrase, is an absurdity. When Comte says, for 
example, that the authority of humanity must take the place 
of that of God, he has recognised that religion must have 
authority. Indeed, the whole social order must have authority. 
However, this is not for him, as we are accustomed to say, the 
authority of the truth and of the right. There is no such 
abstraction as the truth, coming to various manifestations. 
There is no such thing as right, apart from relatively right 
concrete measures. There is no larger being indwelling in 
men. Society, humanity in its collective capacity, must, if 
need be, override the individual. Yet Comte despises the 
mere rule of majorities. The majority which he would have 
rule is that of those who have the scientific mind. We may 
admit that in this he aims at the supremacy of truth. But, 
in fact, he prepares the way for a doctrinaire tyranny which, 
of all forms of government, might easily turn out to be the 
worst which a long-suffering humanity has yet endured. 

In the end, we are told, love is to take the place of force. 
Humanity is present to us first in our mothers, wives and 
daughters. For these it is present in their fathers, husbands, 
sons. From this primary circle love widens and worship ex- 
tends as hearts enlarge. It is the prayer to humanity which 
first rises above the mere selfishness of the effort to get 
something out of God. Remembrance in the hearts of those 
who loved us and owe something to us is the only worthy 
form of immortality. Clearly it is only the caricature of 
prayer or of the desire of immortality which rises before 
Comte's mind as the thing to be escaped. For this caricature 
religious men, both Catholic and Protestant, without doubt, 



162 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

gave him cause. There were to be seven sacraments, corre- 
sponding to seven significant epochs in a man's career. There 
were to be priests for the performance of these sacraments and 
for the inculcation of the doctrines of positivism. There were 
to be temples of humanity, affording opportunity for and 
reminder of this worship. In each temple there was to be 
set up the symbol of the positivist religion, a woman of thirty 
years with her little son in her arms. Littre spoke bitterly 
of the positivist religion as a lapse of the author into his old 
aberration. This religion was certainly regarded as negligible 
by many to whom his system as a whole meant a great deal. 
At least, it is an interesting example, as is also his transfor- 
mation of science into a philosophy, of the resurgence of valid 
elements in life, even in the case of a man who has made it 
his boast to do away with them. 

Naturalism and Agnosticism 

We may take Spencer as representative of a group of men 
who, after the middle of the nineteenth century, laboured 
enthusiastically to set forth evolutionary and naturalistic 
theories of the universe. These theories had also, for the 
most part, the common trait that they professed agnosticism 
as to all that lay beyond the reach of the natural-scientific 
methods, in which the authors were adept. Both Ward and 
Boutroux accept Spencer as such a type. Agnosticism for 
obvious reasons could be no system. Naturalism is a tendency 
in interpretation of the universe which has many ramifica- 
tions. There is no intention of making the reference to one 
man's work do more than serve as introduction to the 
field. 

Spencer was eager in denial that he had been influenced by 
Comte. Yet there is a certain reminder of Comte in Spencer's 
monumental endeavour to systematise the whole mass of 
modem scientific knowledge, under the general title of 'A 
Synthetic Philosophy.' He would show the unity of the 
sciences and their common principles or, rather, the one great 
common principle which they all illustrate, the doctrine of 



v.] NATURAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 163 

evolution, as this had taken shape since the time of Darwin. 
Since 1904 we have an autobiography of Herbert Spencer, 
which, to be sure, seems largely to have been written prior to 
1889. The book is interesting, as well in the light which it 
throws upon the expansion of the sciences and the develop- 
ment of the doctrine of evolution in those years, as in the 
revelation of the personal traits of the man himself. Con- 
cerning these Tolstoi wrote to a friend, apropos of a gift of 
the book : ' In autobiographies the most important psycho- 
logical phenomena are often revealed quite independently 
of the author's will.' 

Spencer was born in 1820 in Derby, the son of a school- 
master. He came of Nonconformist ancestry of most marked 
individuality. His early education was irregular and in- 
adequate. Before he reached the age of seventeen his read- 
ing had been immense. He worked with an engineer in the 
period of the building of the railways in the Midlands. He 
always retained his interest in inventions. He wrote for the 
newspapers and magazines and definitely launched upon a 
literary career. At the age of thirty he published his first 
book, on Social Statics. He made friends among the most 
notable men and women of his age. So early as 1855 he 
was the victim of a disease of the heart which never left him. 
It was on his recovery from his first grave attack that he 
shaped the plan which henceforth held him, of organising the 
modern sciences and incorporating them into what he called a 
synthetic philosophy. There was immense increase in actual 
knowledge and in the power of his reflection on that know- 
ledge, as the years went by. A generation elapsed between 
the publication of his First Principles and the conclusion of 
his more formal literary labours. There is something cap- 
tivating about a man's life, the energy of which remains so 
little impaired that he esteems it better to write a new 
book, covering some untouched portion of his scheme, than 
to give to an earlier volume the revision which in the light 
of his matured convictions it may need. His philosophical 
limitations he never transcended. He does not so naively 
offer a substitute for philosophy as does Comte. But he was 



164 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

no master in philosophy. There is a reflexion of the con- 
sciousness of this fact in his agnosticism. 

That the effect of the agnostic contention has been great, 
and on the whole salutary, few would deny. Spencer's own 
later work shows that his declaration, that the absolute which 
lies behind the universe is unknowable, is to be taken with 
considerable qualification. It is only a relative unknowable- 
ness which he predicates. Moreover, before Spencer's death, 
the doctrine of evolution had made itself profoundly felt in 
the discussion of all aspects of life, including that of religion. 
There seemed no longer any reason for the barrier between 
science and religion which Spencer had once thought 
requisite. 

The epithet agnostic, as applied to a certain attitude of 
scientific mind, is just, as over against excessive claims to 
valid knowledge made, now by theology and now by specu- 
lative philosophy. It is hardly descriptive in any absolute 
sense. Spencer had coined the rather fortunate illustration 
which describes science as a gradually increasing sphere, 
such that every addition to its surface does but bring us into 
more extensive contact with surrounding nescience. Even 
upon this illustration Ward has commented that the metaphor 
is misleading. The continent of our knowledge is not merely 
bounded by an ocean of ignorance. It is intersected and cut 
up by straits and seas of ignorance. The author of Ecce 
Caelum has declared : ' Things die out under the microscope 
into the same unfathomed and, so far as we can see, unfathom- 
able mystery, into which they die off beyond the range of our 
most powerful telescope.' This sense of the circumambient 
unknown has become cardinal with the best spirits of the age. 
Men have a more rigorous sense of what constitutes know- 
ledge. They have reckoned more strictly with the methods 
by which alone secure and solid knowledge may be attained. 
They have undisguised scepticism as to alleged knowledge 
not arrived at in these ways. It was the working of these 
motives which gave to the labours of the middle of the nine- 
teenth century so prevailingly the aspect of denial, the char- 
acter which Carlyle described as an everlasting No. This 



v.] NATURAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 165 

was but a preparatory stage, a retrogression for a new and 
firmer advance. 

In the sense of the recognition of our ignorance and of a 
becoming modesty of affirmation, over against the mystery 
into which all our thought runs out, we cannot reject the 
correction which agnosticism has administered. It is a fact 
which has had disastrous consequences, that precisely the 
department of thought, namely the religious, which one 
might suppose would most have reminded men of the outlying 
mystery, that phase of life whose very atmosphere is mystery, 
has most often been guilty of arrant dogmatism. It has been 
thus guilty upon the basis of the claim that it possessed a reve- 
lation. It has allowed itself unlimited licence of affirmation 
concerning the most remote and difficult matters. It has 
alleged miraculously communicated information concerning 
those matters. It has clothed with a divine authoritativeness, 
overriding the mature reflexion and laborious investigation 
of learned men, that which was, after all, nothing but the 
innocent imaginings of the childhood of the race. In this 
good sense of a parallel to that agnosticism which scientists 
profess for themselves within their own appointed realm, 
there is a religious agnosticism which is one of the best fruits 
of the labour of the age. It is not that religious men have 
abandoned the thought of revelation. They apprehended 
more Justly the nature of revelation. They confess that 
there is much ignorance which revelation does not mitigate. 
Exeunt omnia in mysterium. They are prepared to say 
concerning many of the dicta of religiosity, that they cannot 
affirm their truth. They are prepared to say concerning the 
experience of God and the soul, that they know these with an 
indefeasible certitude. This just and wholesome attitude 
toward religious truth is only a corollary of the attitude 
which science has taught us toward all truth whatsoever. 

The strictly philosophic term phenomenon, to which science 
has taken so kindly, is in itself an explicit avowal of something 
beyond the phenomenal. Spencer is careful to insist upon this 
relation of the phenomenal to the noumenal. His Synthetic 
Philosophy opens with an exposition of this non-relative or 



166 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

absolute, without which the relative itself becomes contra- 
dictory. It is an essential part of Spencer's doctrine to 
maintain that our consciousness of the absolute, indefinite as 
it is, is positive and not negative. ' Though the absolute 
cannot in any manner or degree be known, in the strict sense 
of knowing, yet we find that its positive existence is a neces- 
sary datum of consciousness. The belief which this datum 
of consciousness constitutes has a higher warrant than any 
other belief whatsoever.' In short, the absolute or noumenal, 
according to Spencer, though not known as the phenomenal 
or relative is known, is so far from being for knowledge a 
pure blank, that the phenomenal, which is said to be known, 
is in the strict sense inconceivable without it. This actuahty 
behind appearances, without which appearances are unthink- 
able, is by Spencer identified with that ultimate verity upon 
which religion ever insists. Religion itself is a phenomenon, 
and the source and secret of most complex and interesting 
phenomena. It has always been of the greatest importance 
in the history of mankind. It has been able to hold its own 
in face of the attacks of science. It must contain an element 
of truth. All religions, however, assert that their God is for 
us not altogether cognisable, that God is a great mystery. 
The higher their rank, the more do they acknowledge this. 
It is by the flippant invasion of this mystery that the 
popular religiosity offends. It talks of God as if he were a 
man in the next street. It does not distinguish between 
merely imaginative fetches into the truth, and presumably 
accurate definition of that truth. Equally, the attempts 
which are logically possible at metaphysical solutions of the 
problem, namely, theism, pantheism, and atheism, if they are 
consistently carried out, assert, each of them, more than we 
know and are involved in contradiction with themselves. 
But the results of modem physics and chemistry reveal, as 
the constant element in all phenomena, force. This mani- 
fests itself in various forms which are interchangeable, while 
amid all these changes the force remains the same. This 
latter must be regarded as the reality, and basis of all that 
is relative and phenomenal. The entire universe is to be 



v.] NATURAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 167 

explained from the movements of this absolute force. The 
phenomena of nature and of mental life come under the same 
general laws of matter, motion, and force. 

Spencer's doctrine, as here stated, is not adequate to 
account for the world of mental life or adapted to serve as the 
basis of a reconciliation of science and religion. It does 
not carry us beyond materialism. Spencer's real inten- 
tion was directed to something higher than that. If the 
absolute is to be conceived at all, it is as a necessary corre- 
lative of our self-consciousness. If we get the idea of force 
from the experience of our own power of volition, is it not 
natural to think of mind-force as the prius of physical force, 
and not the reverse ? Accordingly, the absolute force, basis 
of all specific forces, would be mind and will. The doctrine of 
evolution would harmonise perfectly with these inferences. 
But it would have to become idealistic evolution, as in Schel- 
ling, instead of materialistic, as in Comte. We are obliged, 
Spencer owns, to refer the phenomenal world of law and order 
to a first cause. He says that this first cause is incompre- 
hensible. Yet he further says, when the question of attribut- 
ing personality to this first cause is raised, that the choice 
is not between personality and something lower. It is 
between personality and something higher. To this may 
belong a mode of being as much transcending intelligence 
and will as these transcend mechanical motion. It is strange, 
he says, that men should suppose the highest worship to lie 
in assimilating the object of worship to themselves. And yet, 
again, in one of the latest of his works he writes : ' Unex- 
pected as it will be to most of my readers, I must assert that 
the power which manifests itself in consciousness is but a 
differently conditioned form of the power which manifests itself 
beyond consciousness. The conception to which the explora- 
tion of nature everywhere tends is much less that of a uni- 
verse of dead matter than that of a universe everywhere alive.' 

Similar is the issue in the reflexion of Huxley. Agnos- 
ticism had at first been asserted in relation to the spiritual 
and the teleological. It ended in fastening upon the material 
and mechanical. After all, says Huxley, in one of his essays : — 



168 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

' What do we know of this terrible matter, except as a name 
for an unknown and hypothetical cause of states of our own 
consciousness ? Again, what do we know of that spirit over 
whose threatened extinction by matter so great lamentation 
has now arisen, except that it is also a name for an unknown 
and hypothetical cause of states of our consciousness ? ' He 
concedes that matter is inconceivable apart from mind, but 
that mind is not inconceivable apart from matter. He con- 
cedes that the conception of universal and necessary law is 
an ideal. It is an invention of the mind's own devising. It 
is not a physical fact. In brief, taking agnostic naturalism 
just as it seemed disposed a generation ago to present itself, 
it now appears as if it had been turned exactly inside out. 
Instead of the physical world being primary and fundamental 
and the mental world secondary, if not altogether proble- 
matical, the precise converse is true. 

Nature, as science regards it, may be described as a system 
whose parts, be they simple or complex, are wholly governed 
by universal laws. Knowledge of these laws is an indis- 
pensable condition of that control of nature upon which 
human welfare in so large degree depends. But this reign 
of law is an hypothesis. It is not an axiom which it would 
be absurd to deny. It is not an obvious fact, thrust upon us 
whether we will or no. Experiences are possible without 
the conception of law and order. The fruit of experience in 
knowledge is not possible without it. That is only to say 
that the reason why we assume that nature is a connected 
system of uniform laws, lies in the fact that we ourselves are 
self-conscious personalities. When the naturalists say that 
the notion of cause is a fetish, an anthropomorphic super- 
stition which we must eliminate, we have to answer : * from 
the realm of empirical science perhaps, but not from experience 
as a whole.' Indeed, a glance at the history, and particularly 
at the popular literature, of science affords the interesting 
spectacle of the rise of an hallucination, the growth of a habit 
of mythological speech, which is truly surprising. We begin 
to hear of self-existent laws which reign supreme and bind 
nature fast in fact. By this learned substitution for God, 



v.] NATURAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 169 

it was once confidently assumed that the race was to emerge 
from mythical dawn and metaphysical shadows into the noon- 
day of positive knowledge. Rather, it would appear that at 
this point a part of the human race plunged into a new era 
of myth-making and fetish worship — the homage to the fetish 
of law. Even the great minds do not altogether escape. ' Fact 
I know and law I know,' says Huxley, with a faint sugges- 
tion of sacred rhetoric. But surely we do not know law in the 
same sense in which we know fact. If there are no causes 
among our facts, then we do not know anything about the 
laws. If we do know laws it is because we assume causes. 
If, in the language of rational beings, laws of nature are to 
be spoken of as self-existent and independent of the pheno- 
mena which they are said to govern, such language must be 
merely analogous to the manner in which we often speak of 
the civil law. We say the law does that which we know the 
executive does. But the thorough-going naturalist cast oflf 
these implications as the last rags of a creed outworn. Physi- 
cists were fond of talking of the movement of molecules, just 
as the ancient astrologers imagined that the planets had souls 
and guided their own courses. We had supposed that this 
was anthropomorphism. In truth, this would-be scientific 
mode of speech is as anthropomorphic as is the cosmogony 
of Hesiod, only on a smaller scale. Primitive religion 
ascribed life to everything of which it talked. Polytheism 
in religion and independent forces and self-existent laws in 
science are thus upon a par. The gods many and lords many, 
so amenable to concrete presentation in poetry and art, have 
given place to one Supreme Being. So also light, heat, and 
other natural agencies, palpable and ready to hand for the 
explanation of everything, in the myth-making period of 
science which living men can still remember, have by this 
time paled. They have become simply various manifestations 
of one underlying spiritual energy, which is indeed beyond 
our perception.^ When Comte said that the universe could 
not rest upon will, because then it would be arbitrary, in- 
calculable, subject to caprice, one feels the humour and pathos 
1 Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, vol. ii. p. 248. 



170 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

of it. Comte's experience with will, his own and that of 
others, had evidently been too largely of that sad sort. Real 
freedom consists in conformity to what ought to be. In 
God, whom we conceive as perfect, this conformity is com- 
plete. With us it remains an ideal. Were we the creatures 
of a blind mechanical necessity there could be no talk of ideal 
standards and no meaning in reason at all. 



Evolution 

In the progress of the thought of the generation, say, from 
1870 to the present day, the conception of evolution has been 
much changed. The doctrine of evolution has itself been 
largely evolved within that period. The appUcation of it 
has become familiar in jfields of which there was at first no 
thought. The bearing of the acceptance of it upon religion 
has been seen to be quite different from that which was at 
first supposed. The advocacy of the doctrine was at first 
associated with the claims of naturalism or positivism. Wider 
applications of the doctrine and deeper insight into its mean- 
ing have done away with this misunderstanding. Evolution, 
as originally understood, was as far as possible from suggesting 
anything mechanical. By the term was meant primarily 
the gradual unfolding of a Hving germ from its embryonic 
beginning to its mature and final stage. This adult form was 
regarded not merely as the goal actually reached through 
successive stages of growth. It was conceived as the end 
aimed at, and achieved through the force of some vital or 
ideal principle shaping the plastic material and directing the 
process of growth. In short, evolution implied ideal ends 
controlling physical means. Yet we find with Spencer, as 
prevailingly also with others in the study of the natural 
sciences, the ideas of end and of cause looked at askance. 
They are regarded as outside the pale of the natural sciences. 
In a very definite sense that is true. The logical consequence 
of this admission should be merely the recognition that the 
idea of evolution as developed in the natural sciences can- 
not be the whole idea. 



v.] NATURAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 171 

The entire history of anything, Spencer tells us, must 
include its appearance out of the imperceptible, and its 
disappearance again into the imperceptible. Be it a single 
object, or the whole universe, an account which begins with 
it in a concrete form, or leaves off with its concrete form, 
is incomplete. He uses a familiar instance, that of a cloud 
appearing when vapour drifts over a cold mountain top, and 
again disappearing when it emerges into warmer air. The 
cloud emerges from the imperceptible as heat is dissipated. 
It is dissolved again as heat is absorbed and the watery 
particles evaporate. Spencer esteems this an analogue of 
the appearance of the universe itself, according to the nebular 
hypothesis. Yet assuredly, as the cloud presupposes vapours 
which had previously condensed, and the vapour clouds that 
had previously evaporated, and as clouds dissolve in one place 
even at the moment that they are forming in another, so we 
are told of nebulae which are in every phase of advance or of 
decline. To ask which was first, solid masses or nebulous 
haze, is much like recurring to the riddle of the hen and the 
egg. Still, we are told, we have but to extend our thought 
beyond this emergence and subsidence of sidereal systems, 
of continents, nations, men, to find a permanent totality 
made up of transient individuals in every stage of change. 
The physical assumption with which Spencer sets out is 
that the mass of the universe and its energy are fixed in 
quantity. All the phenomena of evolution are included in 
the conservation of this matter and force. 

Besides the criticism which was offered above, that the mere 
law of the persistence of force does not initiate our series, 
there is a further objection. Even within the series, once it 
has been started, this law of the persistence of force is solely 
a quantitative law. When energy is transformed there is an 
equivalence between the new form and the old. Of the 
reasons for the direction evolution takes, for the permanence 
of that direction once it has been taken, so that the sequence 
of forms is a progression, the explication of a latent nature 
— of all this, the mere law of the persistence of force gives us 
no explanation whatever. The change at random from one 



172 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

form of manifestation to another might be a striking illus- 
tration of the law of the persistence of force, but it would be 
the contradiction of evolution. The very notion of evolution 
is that of the sequence of forms, so that something is expressed 
or achieved. That achievement implies more than the mere 
force. Or rather, it involves a quality of the force with which 
the language of mechanism does not reckon. It assumes the 
idea which gives direction to the force, an ideal quality of 
the force. 

Unquestionably that which men sought to be rid of was 
the idea of purpose in nature, in the old sense of design in the 
mind of God, external to the material universe, of force 
exerted upon nature from without, so as to cause nature to 
conform to the design of its ' Great Original,' in Addison's 
high phrase. In this effort, however, the reducing of all to mere 
force and permutation of force, not merely explains nothing, 
but contradicts facts which stare us in the face. It deprives 
evolution of the quaUty which makes it evolution. To put in 
this incongruous quality at the beginning, because we find 
it necessary at the end, is, to say the least, naive. To deny 
that we have put it in, to insist that in the marvellous 
sequence we have only an illustration of mechanism and of 
conservation of force, is perverse. We passed through an 
era in which some said that they did not believe in God ; 
everything was accounted for by evolution. In so far as they 
meant that they did not believe in the God of deism and of 
much traditional theology, they did not stand alone in this 
claim. In so far as they meant by evolution mere mechanism, 
they explained nothing and destroyed the notion of evolution 
besides. In so far as they meant more than mere mechanism, 
they lapsed into the company of the scientific myth-makers 
to whom we alluded above. They attributed to their ab- 
straction, evolution, qualities which other people found in 
the forms of the universe viewed as the manifestation of an 
immanent God. Only by so doing were they able to ascribe 
to evolution that which other people describe as the work 
of God. At this level the controversy becomes one simply 
about words. 



v.] NATURAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 173 

Of course, the great illumination as to the meaning of 
evolution has come with its application to many fields besides 
the physical. Darwin was certainly the great inaugurator of 
the evolutionary movement in England. Still, Darwin's 
problem was strictly limited. The impression is widespread 
that the biological evolutionary theories were first developed, 
and furnished the basis for the others. Yet both Hegel and 
Comte, not to speak of Schelling, were far more interested 
in the intellectual and historical, the ethical and social aspects 
of the question. Both Hegel and Comte were, whether rightly 
or wrongly, rather contemptuous of the appeal to biology and 
organic life. Both had the sense that they used a great figure 
of speech when they spoke of society as an organism, and 
compared the working of institutions to biological fimctions. 
This is indeed the question. It is a question over which 
Spencer sets himself lightly. He passes back and forth 
between organic evolution and the ethical, economic, and 
social movements which are described by the same term, as 
if we were in possession of a perfectly safe analogy, or rather 
as if we were assured of an identical principle. Much that is 
already archaic in Spencer's economic and social, his historical 
and ethical, not to say his religious, chapters is due to the 
influence of this fact. Of his own mind it was true that he 
had come to the doctrine of evolution from the physical side. 
He brought to his other subjects a more or less developed 
method of operating with the conception. He never fully 
realised how new subjects would alter the method and trans- 
form the conception. Spencerian evolution is an assertion 
of the all-sufficiency of natural law. The authority of con- 
science is but the experience of law-abiding and dutiful 
generations flowing in our veins. The public weal has hold 
over us, because the happiness and misery of past ages are 
inherited by us. 

It marked a great departure when Huxley began vigorously 
to dissent from these views. According to him evolutionary 
science has done nothing for ethics. Men become ethical 
only as they set themselves against the principles embodied 
in the evolutionary process of the world. Evolution is the 



174 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

struggle for existence. It is preposterous to say that man 
became good by succeeding in the struggle for existence. 
Instead of the old single movement, as in Spencer, straight 
from the nebula to the saint, Huxley has place for suffering. 
Suffering is most intense in man precisely under conditions 
most essential to the evolution of his nobler powers. The 
loss of ease or money may be gain in character. The cosmical 
process is not only full of pain. It is full of mercilessness and 
of wickedness. Good has been evolved, but so has evil. The 
fittest may have survived. There is no guarantee that they 
are the best. The continual struggle against our fellows 
poisons our higher life. It will hardly do to say with Huxley 
that the ethical struggle is the reverse of the cosmical process. 
Nevertheless, we have here a most interesting transformation 
in thought. 

These ideas and principles, as is well known, were elabo- 
rated and advanced upon in a very popular book, Drum- 
mond's Ascent of Man, 1894. Even the title was a happy 
and suggestive one. Struggle for life is a fact, but it is not 
the whole fact. It is balanced by the struggle for the life 
of others. This latter reaches far down into the levels of 
what we call brute life. Its divinest reach is only the fulfil- 
ment of the real nature of humanity. It is the living with 
men which develops the moral in man. The prolongation of 
infancy in the higher species has had to do with the develop- 
ment of moral nature. So only that we hold a sufficiently 
deep view of reason, provided we see clearly that reason 
transforms, perfects, makes new what we inherit from the 
beast, we need not fear for morality, though it should univer- 
sally be taught that morality came into being by the slow and 
gradual fashioning of brute impulse. 

Benjamin Kidd in his Social Evolution, 1895, has reverted 
again to extreme Darwinism in morals and sociology. The 
law is that of unceasing struggle. Reason does not teach us 
to moderate the struggle. It but sharpens the conflict. All 
religions are prseter-rational, Christianity most of all, in being 
the most altruistic. Kidd, not without reason, comments 
bitterly upon Spencer's Utopia, the passage of militarism into 



v.] NATURAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 175 

industrialism. The struggle in industrialism is fiercer than 
ever. Reason aflEects the animal nature of man for the worse. 
Clearly conscious of what he is doing, man objects to sacrific- 
ing himself for his family or tribe. Instinct might lead an ape 
to do that. Intelligence warns a man against it. Reason is 
cruel beyond anything dreamed of in the beast. That portion 
of the community which loves to hear the abuse of reason, 
rejoiced to hear this phrase. They rejoiced when they heard 
that religion was the only remedy, and that religion was ultra- 
rational, contra-rational, supernatural, in this new sense. 
How one comes by it, or how one can rationally justify the 
yielding of allegiance to it, is not clear. One must indeed 
have the will to believe if one believes on these terms. 

These again are but examples. They convey but a super- 
ficial impression of the effort to apply the conception of 
evolution to the moral and religious life of man. All this has 
taken place, of course, in a far larger setting — that of the 
endeavour to elaborate the evolutionary view of politics and 
of the state, of economics and of trade, of social life and in- 
stitutions, of culture and civilisation in every aspect. This 
elaboration and reiteration of the doctrine of evolution some- 
times wearies us. It is but the unwearied following of the 
main clue to the riddle of the universe which the age has 
given us. It is nothing more and nothing less than the 
endeavour to apprehend the ideal life, no longer as something 
held out to us, set up before us, but also as something working 
within us, realising itself through us and among us. To deny 
the affinity of this with religion would be fatuous and also 
futile. Temporarily, at least, and to many interests of re- 
ligion, it would be fatal. 

Miracles 

It must be evident that the total view of the universe 
which the acceptance of the doctrine of evolution implies, has 
had effect in the diminution of the acuteness of the question 
concerning miracles. It certainly gives to that question a 
new form. A philosophy which asserts the constant presence 



176 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

of God in nature and the whole Ufe of the world, a criticism 
which has given us a truer notion of the documents which 
record the biblical miracles, the reverent sense of ignorance 
which our increasing knowledge affords, have tended to 
diminish the dogmatism of men on either side of the debate. 
The contention on behalf of the miracle, in the traditional 
sense of the word, once seemed the bulwark of positive 
religion, the distinction between the man who was satisfied 
with a naturalistic explanation of the universe and one whose 
devout soul asked for something more. On the other hand, 
the contention against the miracle appeared to be a necessary- 
corollary of the notion of a law and order which are inviolable 
throughout the universe. Furthermore, many men have 
come of themselves to the conclusion for which Schleier- 
macher long ago contended. Whatever may be theoretically 
determined concerning miracles, yet the miracle can never 
again be regarded as among the foundations of faith. This is 
for the simplest of reasons. The belief in a miracle presup- 
poses faith. It is the faith which sustains the miracle, and 
not the miracle the faith. Jesus is to men the incompar- 
able moral and spiritual magnitude which he is, not on the 
evidence of some unparalleled things physical which it is 
alleged he did. Quite the contrary, it is the immediate 
impression of the moral and spiritual wonder which Jesus is, 
that prepares what credence we can gather for the wonders 
which it is declared he did. This is a transfer of emphasis, 
a redistribution of weight in the structure of our thought, 
the relief of which many appreciate who have not reasoned 
the matter through for themselves. 

Schleiermacher had said, and Herrmann and others repeat 
the thought, that, as the Christian faith finds in Christ the 
highest revelation, miracles may reasonably be expected of 
him. Nevertheless, he adds, these deeds can be called 
miracles or esteemed extraordinary, only as containing 
something which was beyond contemporary knowledge of the 
regular and orderly connexion between physical and spiritual 
life. Therewith, it must be evident, that the notion of the 
miraculous is fundamentally changed. So it comes to pass 



v.] NATURAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 177 

that we have a book hlie Mackintosh's Natural History of the 
Christian Religion, 1894, whose avowed purpose is to do away 
with the miraculous altogether. Of course, the author means 
the traditional notion of the miraculous, according to which it 
is the essence of arbitrariness and the negation of law. It is 
not that he has less sense for the divine life of the world, or for 
the quality of Christianity as revelation. On the other hand, 
we have a book like Percy Gardner's Exploratio Evangelica, 
1899. With the most searching criticism of the narratives 
of some miracles, there is reverent confession, on the author's 
part, that he is baffled by the reports of others. There is 
recognition of unknown possibilities in the case of a character 
like that of Jesus. It is not that Gardner has a less stringent 
sense of fact and of the inexorableness of law than has 
Mackintosh or an ardent physicist. The problem is reduced 
to that of the choice of expression. We are not able to with- 
hold a justification of the scholar who declares : We must not 
say that we believe in the miraculous. This language is sure 
to be appropriated by those who still take their departure 
from the old dualism, now hopelessly obsolete, for which a 
breach of the law of nature was the crowning evidence of the 
love of God. On the other hand, the assertion that we do 
not believe in the miraculous will easily be taken by some 
to mean the denial of the whole sense of the nearness and 
power and love of God, and of the unimagined possibilities 
of such a moral nature as was that of Christ. It is to be 
repeated that we have here a mere difference as to terms. 
The debate is no longer about ideas. 

The traditional notion of the miracle arose out of the con- 
fusion of two series of ideas which, in the last analysis, have 
nothing to do with each other. On the one hand, there is 
the conception of law and order, of cause and effect, of the 
unbroken connexion of nature. On the other hand is the 
thought of the divine purpose in the Ufe of the world and of 
the individual. By the aid of that first sequence of thoughts 
we find ourselves in the universe and interpret the world of 
fact to ourselves. Yet in the other sequence lies the essence 
of religion. The two sequences may perfectly well coexist 

M 



178 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

in the same mind. Out of the attempt to combine them 
nothing clear or satisfying can issue. If one should be, 
to-day, brought face to face with a fact which was alleged to 
be a miracle, his instinctive effort would be, nevertheless, to 
seek to find its cause, to estabUsh for it a connexion in the 
natural order. In the ancient world men did not argue thus, 
nor in the modern world until less than two hundred years ago. 
The presumption of the order of nature had not assumed 
for them the proportions which it has for us. For us it is 
overwhelming, self-evident. Therewith is not involved that 
we lack belief in a divine purpose for the world and for the 
individual Ufe. 

We do not deny that there are laws of nature of which we 
have no experience, facts which we do not understand, events 
which, if they should occur, would stand before us as unique. 
Still, the decisive thing is, that in face of such an event, instead 
of viewing it quite simply as a divine intervention, as men 
used to do, we, with equal simphcity and no less devoutness, 
conceive that same event as only an illustration of a connexion 
in nature which we do not understand. There is no inherent 
reason why we may not understand it. When we do under- 
stand it, there will be nothing more about it that is con- 
ceivably miraculous. There will be then no longer a unique 
quality attaching to the event. Therewith ends the possible 
significance of such an event as proof of divine intervention 
for our especial help. We have but a connexion in nature 
such that, whether understood or not, if it were to recur, 
the event would recur. 

The miracles which are related in the Scripture may be 
divided for our consideration into three classes. To the first 
class belong most of those which are related in the Old Testa- 
ment, but some also which are conspicuous in the New 
Testament. They are, in some cases, the poetical and imagina- 
tive representation of the profoundest religious ideas. So 
soon as one openly concedes this, when there is no longer 
any necessity either to attack or to defend the miracle in 
question, one is in a position to acknowledge how deep and 
wonderful the thoughts often are and how beautiful the form 



v.] NATURAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 179 

in which they are conveyed. It is through imagination and 
symbohsm that we are able to convey the subtlest meanings 
which we have. Still more was this the case with men of an 
earlier age. In the second place, the narratives of miracles 
are, some of them, of such a sort that we may say that an 
event or circumstance in nature has been obviously appre- 
hended in naive fashion. This by no means forbids us to 
interpret that same event in quite a different way. The men 
of former time, exactly in proportion as they had less sense 
of the order of nature than have we, so were they also far 
readier to assume the immediate forthputting of the power 
of God. This was true not merely of the uneducated. It is 
difficult, or even impossible, for us to find out what the event 
was. Fact and apprehension are inextricably interwoven. 
That which really happened is concealed from us by the tale 
which had intended to reveal it. In the third place, there 
are many cases in the history of Jesus, and some in that of the 
apostles and prophets, in which that which is related moves 
in the borderland between body and soul, spirit and matter, 
the region of the influence of will, one's own or that of another, 
over physical conditions. Concerning such cases we are dis- 
posed, far more than were men even a few years ago, to concede 
that there is much that is by no means yet investigated, 
and the soundest judgment we can form is far from being 
sure. Even if we recognise to the full the lamentable resur- 
gence of outworn superstitions and stupidities, which again 
pass current among us for an unhappy moment, if we detect 
the questionable or manifestly evil consequences of certain 
uses made or alleged of psychic influence, yet still we are 
not always in a position to say, with certainty, what is true 
in tales of healing which we hear in our own day. There are 
certain of the statements concerning Jesus' healing power 
and action which are absolutely baffling. They can be 
eliminated from the narrative only by a procedure which 
might just as well eliminate the narrative. In many of the 
narratives there may be much that is true. In some all 
may be as related. In Jesus' time, on the witness of the Scrip- 
ture itself, it was assumed as something no one questioned, 



180 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

that miraculous deeds were performed, not alone by Jesus 
and the apostles, but by many others, and not always even 
by the good. Such deeds were performed through the power of 
evil spirits as well as by the power of God. To imagine that 
the working of miracles proved that Jesus came from God, 
is the most patent importation of a modern apologetic notion 
into the area of ancient thought. We must remember that 
Jesus himself laid no great weight upon the miracles which 
we assume that he believed he wrought, and some of which 
we may believe that he did work. Many he performed with 
hesitation and desired so far as possible to conceal. 

Even if we were in a position at one point or another in 
the life of Jesus to defend the traditional assumptions con- 
cerning the miraculous, yet it must be evident how opposed 
it is to right reason, to lay stress on the abstract necessity 
of belief in the miraculous. The traditional conception of 
the miraculous is done away for us. This is not at all by the 
fact that we are in a position to say with Matthew Arnold : 
' The trouble with miracles is that they never happen.' 
We do not know enough to say that. To stake all on the 
assertion of the impossibility of so-called miracles is as foolish 
as to stake much on the affirmation of their actuaUty. The 
connexion of nature is only an induction. This can never 
be complete. The real question is both more complex and 
also more simple. The question is whether, even if an event, 
the most unparalleled of those related in the Gospels or outside 
of them, should be proved before our very eyes to have taken 
place, the question is whether we should believe it to have 
been a miracle in the traditional sense, an event in which 
the actual — not the known, but the possible — order of nature 
had been broken through, and in the old sense, God had 
arbitrarily supervened. 

Allowed that the event were, in our own experience and in 
the known experience of the race, unparalleled, yet it would 
never occur to us to suppose but that there was a law of 
this case, also, a connexion in nature in which, as work of 
God, it occurred, and in which, if the conditions were repeated, 
it would recur. We should unceasingly endeavour through 



v.] NATURAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 181 

observation, reflexion, and new knowledge, to show how we 
might subordinate this event in the connexion of nature 
which we assume. We should feel that we knew more, and 
not less, of God, if we should succeed. And if our effort 
should prove altogether futile, we should be no less sure that 
such natural connexion exists. This is because nature is 
for us the revelation of the divine. The divine, we assume, 
has a natural order of working. Its inviolability is the 
divinest thing about it. It is through this sequence of ideas 
that we are in a position to deny, not facts which may be 
inexplicable, but the traditional conception of the miracle. 
For surely no one needs to be told that this is not the 
conception of the miracle which has existed in the minds 
of the devout, and equally of the undevout, from the be- 
ginning of thought until the present day. 

However, there is nothing in all of this which hinders us 
from believing with a full heart in the love and grace and 
care of God, in his holy and redeeming purpose for mankind 
and for the individual. It is true that this belief cannot any 
longer retain its naive and childish form. It is true that it 
demands of a man far more of moral force, of ethical and 
spiritual mastery, of insight and firm will, to sustain the 
belief in the purpose of God for himself and for all men, when 
a man believes that he sees and feels God only in and through 
nature and history, through personal consciousness and 
the personal consciousness of Jesus. It is true that it has, 
apparently, been easier for men to think of God as outside 
and above his world, and of themselves as separated from 
their fellows by his special providence. It is more difficult, 
through glad and intelligent subjection to all laws of nature 
and of history, to achieve the education of one's spirit, to 
make good one's inner deliverance from the world, to aid 
others in the same struggle and to set them on their way to 
God. Men grow uncertain within themselves, because they 
say that traditional religion has apprehended the matter in a 
different way. This is true. It is also misleading. What- 
ever miracles Jesus may have performed, no one can say that 
he performed them to make life easier for himself, to escape 



182 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

the common lot, to avoid struggle, to evade sufiEering and 
disgraceful death. On the contrary, in genuine human 
self -distrust, but also in genuine heroism, he gave himself 
to his vocation, accepting all that went therewith, and 
finished the work of God which he had made his own. This 
is the more wonderful because it lay so much nearer to him 
than it can lie to us, to pray for special evidence of the love 
of God and to set his faith on the receiving of it. He had 
not the conception of the relation of God to nature and 
history which we have. 

We may well view the modern tendency to belief in healings 
through prayer, suggestion and faith, as an intelligible, an in- 
teresting, and in part, a touching manifestation. Of course 
there is mingled with it much dense ignorance, some supersti- 
tion and even deception. Yet behind such a phenomenon there 
is meaning. Men of this mind make earnest with the thought 
that God cares for them. Without that thought there is no 
religion. They have been taught to find the evidence of God's 
love and care in the unusual. They are quite logical. It has 
been a weak point of the traditional belief that men have 
said that in the time of Christ there were miracles, but since 
that time, no more. Why not, if we can only in spirit come 
near to Christ and God ? They are quite logical also in that 
they have repudiated modem science. To be sure, no in- 
considerable part of them use the word science continually. 
But the very esoteric quality of their science is that it means 
something which no one else ever imderstood that it meant. 
In reality their breach with science is more radical than their 
breach with Christianity. They feel the contradiction in 
which most men are bound fast, who will let science have its 
way, up to a certain point, but who beyond that, would retain 
the miracle. Dimly the former appreciate that this position 
is impossible. They leave it to other men to become altogether 
scientific if they T\dsh. For themselves they prefer to remain 
religious. What a revival of ancient superstitions they have 
brought to pass, is obvious. Still we shall never get beyond 
such adventurous and preposterous endeavours to rescue that 
which is inestimably precious in religion, until the false anti- 



v.] NATURAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 183 

thesis between reason and faith, the lying contradiction 
between the providence of God and the order of nature, is over- 
come. Some science mankind apparently must have. Alto- 
gether without religion the majority, it would seem, will 
never be. How these are related, the one to the other, not 
every one sees. Many attempt their admixture in unhappy 
ways. They might try letting them stand in peace as comple- 
ment and supplement the one to the other. Still better, they 
may perhaps some day see how each penetrates, permeates 
and glorifies the other. 

The Social Sciences 

We said that the last generation had been characterised 
by an unexampled concentration of intellectual interest upon 
problems presented by the social sciences. With this has 
gone an unrivalled earnestness in the interpretation of religion 
as a social force. The great religious enthusiasm has been 
that of the apphcation of Christianity to the social aspects 
of life. This effort has furnished most of the watchwords of 
religious teaching. It has laid vigorous, not to say violent, 
hands on religious institutions. It has given a new per- 
spective to effort and a new impulse to devotion. The re- 
vival of religion in our age has taken this direction, with an 
exclusiveness which has had both good and evil consequences. 
Yet, before all, it should be made clear that it constitutes 
a religious revival. Some are deploring the prostrate con- 
dition of spiritual interests. If one judged only by conven- 
tional standards, they have much evidence upon their side. 
Some are seeking to galvanise religious life by recurrence to 
evangelistic methods successfully operative half a century 
ago. The outstanding fact is that the age shows immense 
religious vitality, so soon as one concedes that it must be 
allowed to show its vitality in its own way. It is the age 
of the social question. One must be ignorant indeed of the 
activity of the churches and of the productivity of religious 
thinkers, if he does not own that in Christian circles also 
no questions are so rife as these. Whether the panaceas have 



184 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

been all wise or profitable may be questioned. Whether the 
interest has not been even excessive and one-sided, whether 
the accusation has not been occasionally unjust and the self- 
accusation morbid, these are questions which it might be 
possible in some quarters to ask. This is, however, only 
another form of proof of what we say. The religious interest 
in social questions has not been aroused primarily by intellec- 
tual and scientific impulses, nor fostered mainly by doctrinaire 
discussion. On the contrary, the initiative has been from 
the practical side. It has been a question of life and service. 
If anything, one often misses the scientific note in the 
flood of semi-religious literature relating to this theme, the 
realisation that, to do well, it is often profitable to think. 
Yet there is effort to mediate the best results of social- 
scientific thinking, through clerical education and directly 
to the laity. On the other hand, a deep sense of ethical and 
spiritual responsibility is prevalent among thinkers upon 
social topics. 

Often indeed has the quality of Christianity been observed 
which is here exemplified. Each succeeding age has read 
into Christ's teachings, or drawn out from his example, 
the special meaning which that generation, or that social 
level, or that individual man had need to draw. To them in 
their enthusiasm it has often seemed as if this were the only 
lesson reasonable men could draw. Nothing could be more 
enlightening than is refiexion upon this reading of the ever- 
changing ideals of man's life into Christianity, or of Christi- 
anity into the ever-advancing ideals of man's life. This 
chameleonlike quality of Christianity is the farthest possible 
remove from the changelessness which men love to attribute 
to religion. It is the most wonderful quality which Chris- 
tianity possesses. It is precisely because of the recognition 
of this capacity for change that one may safely argue the 
continuance of Christianity in the world. Yet also because 
of this recognition, one is put upon his guard against joining 
too easily in the clamour that a past apprehension of religion 
was altogether wrong, or that a new and urgent one, in its 
exclusive emphasis and its entirety, is right. Our age is 



v.] NATURAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 185 

haunted by the sense of terrific social and economic inequaUties 
which prevail. It has set its heart upon the elimination of 
these inequalities. It is an age whose disrespect for religion 
is in some part due to the fact that religion has not done 
away with these inequalities. It is an age which is imme- 
diately interested in an interpretation of religion which will 
make central the contention that, before all things else, these 
inequalities must be done away. If religion can be made a 
means of every man's getting his share of the blessings of 
this world, well and good. If not, there are many men and 
women to whom religion seems utterly meaningless. 

This sentence hardly overstates the case. It is the challenge 
of the age to religion to do something which the age pro- 
foundly needs, and which religion under its age-long dominant 
apprehension has not conspicuously done, nor even on a great 
scale attempted. It is the challenge to religion to undertake 
a work of surpassing grandeur — nothing less than the actuali- 
sation of the whole ideal of the life of man. Religious men 
respond with the quickened and conscientious conviction, not 
indeed that they have laid too great an emphasis upon the 
spiritual, but that under a dualistic conception of God and 
man and world, they have never sufficiently realised that the 
spiritual is to be realised in the material, the ideal in and not 
apart from the actual, the eternal in and not after the tem- 
poral. Yet with that oscillatory quality which belongs to 
human movements, especially where old wrongs and errors 
have come deeply to be felt, a part of the literature of the con- 
tention shows marked tendency to extremes. A religion in the 
body must become a religion of the body. A Christianity of 
the social state runs risk of being apprehended as merely 
one more means for compassing outward and material ends. 
Religion does stand for the inner life and the transcendent 
world, only not an inner life through the neglect of the outer, 
or a transcendent world in some far-off star or after an aeon or 
two. There might be meaning in the argument that, exactly 
because so many other forces in our age do make for the 
realisation of the outer life and present world with an effective- 
ness and success which no previous age has ever dreamed, 



186 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

there is the more reason, and not the less, why reUgion should 
still be religion. Exactly this is the contention of Eucken in 
one of the most significant contributions of recent years to 
the philosophy of religion, his Wahrheitsgehalt der Religion, 
1901, transl. Jones, 1911. The very source and cause of the 
sure recovery of religion in our age will be the experience 
of the futiUty, the bankruptcy, of a civilisation without 
faith. No nobler argument has been heard in our time 
for the spiritual meaning of religion, with the fullest recog- 
nition of all its other meanings. 

The modem emphasis on the social aspects of reUgion may be 
said to have been first clearly expressed in Seeley's Ecce Homo, 
1867. The pith of the book is in this phrase : ' To reorganise 
society and to bind the members of it together by the closest 
ties was the business of Jesus' life.' Allusion has been made 
to Fremantle's The World as the Subject of Redemption, 1885. 
Worthy of note is also Fairbairn's Religion in History and 
Modern Life, 1894 ; pre-eminently so is Bosanquet's The 
Civilisation of Christendom, 1893. Westcott's Incarnation 
and Common Life, 1893, contains utterances of weight. 
Peabody, in his book, Jesus Christ and the Social Question, 
1905, has given, on the whole, the best resume of the discus- 
sion. He conveys incidentally an impression of the body 
of literature produced in recent years, in which it is assumed, 
sometimes with embitterment, that the centre of gravity of 
Christianity is outside the Church. Sell, in the very title 
of his illuminating httle book, Christenthum und Welt- 
geschichte seit der Reformation : das Christenthum in seiner 
Entwickelung uber die Kirche hinaus, 1910, records an im- 
pression, which is widespread and true, that the characteristic 
mark of modern Christianity is that it has transcended the 
organs and agencies oflficially created for it. It has become 
non-ecclesiastical, if not actually hostile to the Church. It 
has permeated the world in unexpected fashion and does 
the deeds of Christianity, though rather eager to avoid the 
name. The anti-clericalism of the Latin countries is not un- 
intelligible, the anti-ecclesiasticism of the Teutonic not without 
a cause. German socialism, ever since Karl Marx, has been 



v.] NATURAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 187 

fundamentally antagonistic to any religion whatsoever. It is 
purely secularist in tone. This is also a strained situation, 
liable to become perverse. That part of the Christian Church 
which understands itself, rejoices in nothing so much as in the 
fact that the spirit of Christ is so widely disseminated, his 
influence felt by many who do not know what influence it is 
which they feel, his work done by vast numbers who would 
never call themselves his workers. That part of the Church is 
not therewith convinced but that there is need of the Church 
as institution, and of those who are consciously disciples of 
Jesus in the world. 

By far the largest question, however, which is raised in this 
connexion, is one different from any thus far intimated. It 
is, perhaps, the last question one would have expected the 
literature of the social movement to raise. It is, namely, the 
question of the individual. Ever since the middle of the 
eighteenth century a sort of universalistic optimism, to 
which the individual is sacrificed, has obtained. Within 
the period of which this book treats the world has won an 
enlargement of horizon of which it never dreamed. It has 
gained a forecast of the future of culture and civilisation 
which is beyond imagination. The access of comfort makes 
men at home in the world as they never were at home. There 
has been set a value on this life which life never had before. 
The succession of discoveries and applications of discovery- 
makes it seem as if there were to be no end in this direction. 
From Rousseau to Spencer men have elaborated the view 
that the historical process cannot really issue in anything 
else than in ever higher stages of perfection and of happiness. 
They postulate a continuous enhancement of energy and a 
steady perfecting of intellectual and moral quality. As the 
goal of evolution appears an ideal condition which is either 
indefinitely remote, that is, which gives room for the bliss of 
infinite progress in its direction, or else a definitely attainable 
condition, which would have within itself the conditions of 
perpetuity. 

The resistlessness with which this new view of the life of 
civilisation has won acknowledgment from men of all classes 



188 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

is amazing. It rests upon a belief in the self-sufficiency and 
the all-sufficiency of the life of this world, of the bearings of 
which it may be assumed that few of its votaries are aware. 
In reality this view cannot by any possibility be described as 
the result of knowledge. On the contrary, it is a venture of 
faith. It is the pecuhar, the very characteristic and suggestive 
form which the faith of our age takes. Men believe in this 
indefinite progress of the world and of mankind, because 
without postulating such progress they do not see how they 
can assume the absolute worth of an activity which is yet 
the only thing which has any interest to most of them. Under 
this view one can assign to the individual life a definite 
significance, only upon the supposition that the individual 
is the organ of realisation of a part of this progress of man- 
kind. All happiness and suffering, all changes in knowledge 
and manner of conduct, are supposed to have no worth each 
for itself or for the sake of the individual, but only for their 
relation to the movement as a whole. Surely this is an 
illusion. Exactly that in which the characteristic quaUty of 
the world and of hfe is found, the individual personalities, the 
single generations, the concrete events — these lose, in this 
view, their own particular worth. What can possibly be 
the worth of a whole of which the parts have no worth ? 
We have here but a parallel on a huge scale of that deadly 
trait in our own private lives, according to which it makes 
no difference what we are doing, so only that we are doing, 
or whither we are going, so only that we cease-not to go, or 
what our noise is all about, so only that there be no end of 
the noise. Certainly no one can establish the value of the 
evolutionary process in and of itself. 

If the movement as a whole has no definite end that has 
absolute worth, then it has no worth except as the stages, the 
individual factors included in it, attain to something within 
themselves which is of increasing worth. If the movement 
achieves this, then it has worth, not otherwise. We may 
illustrate this question by asking ourselves concerning the 
existence and significance of suffering and of the evil and 
of the bad which are in the world, in their relation to this 



v.] NATURAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 189 

tendency to indefinite progress which is supposed to be 
inherent in civiHsation. On this theory we have to say that 
the suffering of the individual is necessary for the develop- 
ment and perfecting of the whole. As over against the whole 
the individual has no right to make demands as to welfare 
or happiness. The bad also becomes only relative. In 
the movement taken as a whole, it is probably unavoidable. 
In any case it is negUgible, since the movement is irresistible. 
All ethical values are absorbed in the dynamic ones, all 
personal values in the collective ones. Surely the sole 
intelligent question about any civilisation is, what sort of 
men does it produce. If it produces worthless individuals, 
it is so far forth a worthless civilisation. If it has sacrificed 
many worthy men in order to produce this ignoble result, 
then it is more obviously ignoble than ever. 

Furthermore, this notion of an inherent necessity and an 
irresistible tendency to progress is a chimera. The progress 
of mankind is a task. It is something to which the worthy 
human spirit is called upon to make contribution. The 
unworthy never hear the call. Progress is not a natural 
necessity. It is an ethical obligation. It is a task which has 
been fulfilled by previous generations in varying degrees of 
perfectness. It will be participated in by succeeding genera- 
tions with varying degrees of wisdom and success. But as 
to there being anything autonomous about it, this is sheer 
hallucination, myth-making again, on the part of those who 
boast that they despise the myth, miracle-mongering on the 
part of those who have abjured the miracle, nonsense on the 
part of those who boast that they alone are sane. There is no 
ultimate source of civilisation but the individual, as there is 
also no issue of civilisation but in individuals. Men, charac- 
ters, personalities, are the makers of it. Men are the product 
which is made. The higher stages and achievements of the 
Ufe of society have come to pass always and only upon con- 
dition that single personalities have recognised the problem, 
seen their individual duty and known how to inspire others 
with enthusiasm. Periods of decline are always those in 
which this personal element cannot make itself felt. Demo- 



190 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

cracies and periods of the intensity of emphasis upon the 
social movement, tend directly to the depression and sup- 
pression of personality.^ Such reflexions will have served 
their purpose if they give us some clear sense of what we have 
to understand as the effect of the social movement on religion. 
They may give also some forecast of the effect of real religion 
on the social movement. For religion is the relation of God 
and personality. It can be social only in the sense that 
society, in all its normal relations, is the sphere within which 
that relation of God and personality is to be wrought out. 

* Siebeck, Mdigionsphilosojphiej 1893, s. 407. 



VI.1 THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 191 



CHAPTER VI 

THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES: ACTION AND 
REACTION 

In those aspects of our subject with which we have thus far 
dealt, leadership has been largely with the Germans. Effort 
was indeed made in the chapter on the sciences to illustrate 
the progress of thought by reference to British writers. In 
this department the original and creative contribution of 
British authors was great. There were, however, also in the 
earlier portion of the nineteenth century movements of religious 
thought in Great Britain and America related to some of those 
which we have previously considered. Moreover, one of the 
most influential movements of English religious thought, the 
so-called Oxford Movement, with the Anglo-Catholic revival 
which it introduced, was of a reactionary tendency. It has 
seemed, therefore, feasible to append to this chapter that 
which we must briefly say concerning the general movement 
of reaction which marked the century. This reactionary 
movement has indeed everywhere run parallel to the one 
which we have endeavoured to record. It has often with 
vigour run counter to our movement. It has revealed the 
working of earnest and sometimes anxious minds in direc- 
tions opposed to those which we have been studying. No 
one can fail to be aware that there has been a great Catholic 
revival in the nineteenth century. That revival has had 
place in the Roman Catholic countries of the Continent 
as well. It was in order to include the privilege of refer- 
ence to these aspects of our subject that this chapter was 
given a double title. Yet in no country has the nineteenth 
century so favourably altered the position of the Roman 
Catholic Church as in England. In no country has a Church 



192 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT i:ch. 

which has been esteemed to be Protestant been so much 
influenced by CathoHc ideas. This again is a reason for 
including our reference to the reaction here. 

According to Pfleiderer, a new movement in philosophy may 
be said to have begun in Great Britain in the year 1825, with 
the publication of Coleridge's Aids to Reflection, In Coleridge's 
Confessions of an Enquiring Spirit, published six years after 
his death in 1834, we have a suggestion of the biblical-critical 
movement which was beginning to shape itself in Germany. 
In the same years we have evidence in the works of Erskine 
and the early writings of Campbell, that in Scotland theo- 
logians were thinking on Schleiermacher's lines. In those 
same years books of more or less marked rationalistic tendency 
were put forth by the Oriel School. Finally, with Pusey's 
Assize Sermon, in 1833, Newman felt that the movement 
later to be called Tractarian had begun. We shall not be 
wrong, therefore, in saying that the decade following 1825 
saw the beginnings in Britain of more formal reflexion upon 
all the aspects of the theme with which we are concerned. 

What went before that, however, in the way of Uberal 
religious thinking, though informal in its nature, should not 
be ignored. It was the work of the poets of the end of the 
eighteenth and of the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. 
The culmination of the great revolt against the traditional 
in state and society and against the conventional in religion, 
had been voiced in Britain largely by the poets. So vigorous 
was this utterance and so effective, that some have spoken 
of the contribution of the English poets to the theological 
reconstruction. It is certain that the utterances of the poets 
tended greatly to the dissemination of the new ideas. There 
was in Great Britain no such unity as we have observed 
among the Germans, either of the movement as a whole or in 
its various parts. There was a consecution nothing less than 
marvellous in the work of the philosophers from Kant to 
Hegel. There was a theological sequence from Schleier- 
macher to Ritschl. There was an unceasing critical advance 
from the days of Strauss. There was nothing resembling this 
in the work of the English-speaking people. The contributions 



VI.] THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 193 

were for a long time only sporadic. The movement had no 
inclusiveness. There was no aspect of a solid front in the 
advance. In the department of the sciences only was the 
situation different. In a way, therefore, it will be necessary 
in this chapter merely to single out individuals, to note points 
of conflict, one and another, all along the great line of advance. 
Or, to put it differently, it will be possible to pursue a chrono- 
logical arrangement which would have been bewildering in 
our study heretofore. With the one great division between 
the progressive spirits and the men of the reaction, it will 
be possible to speak of philosophers, critics and theologians 
together, among their own contemporaries, and so to follow 
the century as it advances. 

In the closing years of the eighteenth century in England 
what claimed to be a rational supernaturalism prevailed. 
Men sought to combine faith in revealed religion with the 
empirical philosophy of Locke. They conceived God and 
his relation to the world under deistical forms. The educated 
often lacked in singular degree all deeper religious feeling. 
They were averse to mysticism and spurned enthusiasm. 
Utilitarian considerations, which formed the practical side of 
the empirical philosophy, played a prominent part also in ortho- 
dox belief. The theory of the universe which obtained among 
the religious is seen at its worst in some of the volumes of the 
Warburton Lectures, and at its best perhaps in Butler's 
Analogy of Natural and Revealed Religion. The character 
and views of the clergy and of the ruling class among the laity 
of the Church of England, early in the nineteenth century, 
are pictured with love and humour in Trollope's novels. 
They form the background in many of George Eliot's books, 
where, in more mordant manner, both their strength and 
weaknesses are shown. Even the remarks which introduce 
Dean Church's Oxford Movement, 1891, in which the churchly 
element is dealt -vith in deep affection, give anything but 
an inspiring view. 

The contrast with this would-be rational and unemotional 
religious respectability of the upper classes was furnished, for 
masses of the people, in the quickening of the consciousness 

N 



194 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch, 

of sin and grace after the manner of the Methodists. But the 
Methodism of the eariier age had as good as no intellectual 
relations whatsoever. The Wesleys and Whitefield had in- 
deed influenced a considerable portion of the Anglican com- 
munion. Their pietistic trait, combined, for the most part, 
with a Calvinism which Wesley abhorred and an old-fashioned 
low church feeling with which also Wesley had no sympathy, 
shows itself in the so-called evangelical party which was 
strong before 1830. This evangelical movement in the 
Church of England manifested deep religious feeling, it put 
forth zealous philanthropic effort, it had among its represen- 
tatives men and women of great beauty of personal character 
and piety. Yet it was completely cut off from any living 
relation to the thought of the age. There was among its 
representatives no spirit of theological inquiry. There was, 
if anything, less probability of theological reconstruction, 
from this quarter, than from the circles of the older German 
pietism, with which this English evangelicalism of the time of 
the later Georges had not a little in common. There had been 
a great enthusiasm for humanity at the opening of the period 
of the French Revolution, but the excesses and atrocities of 
the Revolution had profoundly shocked the English mind. 
There was abroad something of the same sense for the return 
to nature, and of the greatness of man, which moved Schiller 
and Goethe. The exponents of it were, however, almost 
exclusively the poets, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats and 
Byron. There was nothing which combined these various 
elements as parts of a great whole. Britain had stood outside 
the area of the Revolution, and yet had put forth stupendous 
efforts, ultimately successful, to make an end of the revo- 
lutionary era and of the Napoleonic despotism. This tended 
perhaps to give to Britons some natural satisfaction in the 
British Constitution and the established Church which 
flourished under it. Finally, while men on the Continent 
were devising holy alliances and other chimeras of the sort, 
England was precipitated into the earlier acute stages of the 
industrial revolution in which she has led the European 
nations and still leads. This fact explains a certain pre- 



VI.] THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 195 

occupation of the British mind with questions remote from 
theological reconstruction or religious speculation. 



The Poets 

It may now sound like a contradiction if we assert that 
the years from 1780 to 1830 constitute the era of the noblest 
English poetry since the times of great Elizabeth. The social 
direction of the new theology of the present day, with its cry 
against every kind of injustice, with its claim of an equal 
opportunity for a happy life for every man — this was the fore- 
cast of Cowper, as it had been of Blake. To Blake all outward 
infallible authority of books or churches was iniquitous. He 
was at daggers drawn with every doctrine which set limit to 
the freedom of all men to love God, or which could doubt that 
God had loved all men. Jesus alone had seen the true thing. 
God was a father, every man his child. Long before 1789, 
Burns was filled with the new ideas of the freedom and 
brotherhood of man, with zeal for the overthrow of unjust 
privilege. He had spoken in imperishable words of the 
holiness of the common life. He had come into contact with 
the most dreadful consequences of Calvinism. He has 
pilloried these mercilessly in his * Holy Tulzie ' and in his ' Holy 
Willie's Prayer.' Such poems must have shaken Calvinism 
more than a thousand liberal sermons could have done. What 
Coleridge might have done in this field, had he not so early 
turned to prose, it is not easy to say. The verse of his early 
days rests upon the conviction, fundamental to his later phil- 
osophy, that all the new ideas concerning men and the world 
are a revelation of God. Wordsworth seems never consciously 
to have broken with the current theology. His view of the 
natural glory and goodness of humanity, especially among 
the poor and simple, has not much relation to that theology. 
His view of nature, not as created of God. in the conventional 
sense, but as itself filled with God, of God as conscious of 
himself at every point of nature's being, has still less. Man 
and nature are but different manifestations of the one soul 
of all. Byron's contribution to Christian thought, we need 



196 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

hardly say, was of a negative sort. It was destructive rather 
than constructive. Among the conventions and hypocrisies 
of society there were none which he more utterly despised than 
those of religion and the Church as he saw these. There is 
something volcanic, Voltairean in his outbreaks. But there 
is a difference. Both Voltaire and Byron knew that they 
had not the current religion. Voltaire thought, nevertheless, 
that he had a religion. Posterity has esteemed that he had 
little. Byron thought he had none. Posterity has felt that 
he had much. His attack was made in a reckless bitterness 
which lessened its effect. Yet the truth of many things 
which he said is now overwhelmingly obvious. Shelley 
began with being what he called an atheist. He ended with 
being what we call an agnostic, whose pure poetic spirit 
carried him far into the realm of the highest idealism. The 
existence of a conscious will within the universe is not quite 
thinkable. Yet immortal love pervades the whole. Immor- 
tality is improbable, but his highest flights continually imply 
it. He is sure that when any theology violates the primary 
human affections, it tramples into the dust all thoughts and 
feelings by which men may become good. The men who, 
about 1840, stood paralysed between what Strauss later 
called * the old faith and the new,' or, as Arnold phrased it, were 
' between two worlds^ one dead, the other powerless to be born/ 
found their inmost thoughts written broad for them in Arthur 
Clough. From the time of the opening of Tennyson's work, 
the poets, not by destruction but by construction, not in 
opposition to religion but in harmony with it, have built 
up new doctrines of God and man and aided incalculably in 
preparing the way for a new and nobler theology. In the 
latter part of the nineteenth century there was perhaps no 
one man in England who did more to read all of the vast 
advance of knowledge in the Hght of higher faith, and to fill 
such a faith with the spirit of the glad advance of knowledge, 
than did Browning. Even Arnold has voiced in his poetry 
not a little of the noblest conviction of the age. And what 
shall one say of Mrs. Browning, of the Rossettis and William 
Morris, of Emerson and Lowell, of Lanier and Whitman, 



VI.] THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 197 

who have spoken, often with consummate power and beauty, 
that which one never says at all without faith and rarely 
says well without art ? 

Coleridge 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in 1772 at his father's 
vicarage, Ottery St. Mary's, Devonshire. He was the tenth 
child of his parents, weak in frame, always suffering much. 
He was a student at Christ's Hospital, London, where he was 
properly bullied, then at Jesus College, Cambridge, where 
he did not take his degree. For some happy years he lived 
in the Lake region and was the friend of Wordsworth and 
Southey. He studied in Gottingen, a thing almost unheard 
of in his time. The years 1798 to 1813 were indeed spent in 
utter misery, through the opium habit which he had con- 
tracted while seeking reUef from rheumatic pain. He wrote 
and taught and talked in Highgate from 1814 to 1834. He 
had planned great works which never took shape. For a 
brief period he severed his connexion with the English Church, 
coming under Unitarian influence. He then reverted to the 
relation in which his ecclesiastical instincts were satisfied. 
We read his Aids to Reflection and his Confessions of an En- 
quiring Spirit, and wonder how they can ever have exerted 
a great influence. Nevertheless, they were fresh and stimu- 
lating in their time. That Coleridge was a power, we have 
testimony from men differing among themselves so widely 
as do Hare, Sterling, Newman and John Stuart Mill. 
He was a master of style. He had insight and breadth. 
Tulloch says of the Aids, that it is a book which none 
but a thinker upon divine things will ever like. Not all even 
of these have liked it. Liexcusably fragmentary it some- 
times seems. One is fain to ask : What right has any man 
to publish a scrap-book of his musings ? Coleridge had the 
ambition to lay anew the foundations of spiritual philosophy. 
The Aids were but of the nature of prolegomena. For 
substance his philosophy went back to Locke and Hume and 
to the Cambridge Platonists. He had learned of Kant and 
Schleiermacher as well. He was no metaphysician, but a 



198 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [cbl 

keen interpreter of spiritual facts, who himself had been 
quickened by a particularly painful experience. He saw in 
Christianity, rightly conceived, at once the true explanation 
of our spiritual being and the remedy for its disorder. The 
evangelical tradition brought rehgion to a man from without. 
It took no account of man's spiritual constitution, beyond 
the fact that he was a sinner and in danger of hell. Coleridge 
set out, not from sin alone, but from the whole deep basis of 
spiritual capacity and responsibility upon which sin rests. 
He asserts experience. We are as sure of the capacity for the 
good and of the experience of the good as we can be of the 
evil. The case is similar as to the truth. There are aspects 
of truth which transcend our powers. We use words without 
meaning when we talk of the plans of a being who is neither 
an object for our senses nor a part of our self -consciousness. 
All truth must be capable of being rendered into words con- 
formable to reason. Theologians had declared their doctrines 
true or false without reference to the subjective standard of 
judgment. Coleridge contended that faith must rest not 
merely upon objective data, but upon inward experience. 
The authority of Scripture is in its truthfulness, its answer to 
the highest aspirations of the human reason and the most 
urgent necessities of the moral life. The doctrine of an 
atonement is intelligible only in so far as it too comes within 
the range of spiritual experience. The apostolic language 
took colour from the traditions concerning sacrifice. Much 
has been taken by the Church as literal dogmatic statement 
which should be taken as mere figure of speech, borrowed 
from Jewish sources. 

Coleridge feared that his thoughts concerning Scripture 
might, if published, do more harm than good. They were 
printed first in 1840. Their writing goes back into the 
period long before the conflict raised by Strauss. There is 
not much here that one might not have learned from Herder 
and Lessing. Utterances of Whately and Arnold showed 
that minds in England were waking. But Coleridge's utter- 
ances rest consistently upon the philosophy of religion and 
theory of dogma which have been above implied. They are 



VI.1 THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 199 

more significant than are mere flashes of generous insight, 
like those of the men named. The notion of verbal in- 
spiration or infallible dictation of the Holy Scriptures could 
not possibly survive after the modern spirit of historical 
inquiry had made itself felt. The rabbinical idea was bound 
to disappear. A truer sense of the conditions attending the 
origins and progress of civilisation and of the immaturities 
through which religious as well as moral and social ideas 
advance, brought of necessity a changed idea of the nature 
of Scripture and revelation. Its literature must be read as 
literature, its history as history. For the answer in our 
hearts to the spirit in the Book, Coleridge used the phrase : 
* It finds me.' * Whatever finds me bears witness to itself that 
it has proceeded from the Holy Ghost. In the Bible there is 
more that finds me than in all the other books which I have 
read.' Still, there is much in the Bible that does not find me. 
It is full of contradictions, both moral and historical. Are 
we to regard these as all equally inspired ? The Scripture 
itself does not claim that. Besides, what good would it do 
us to claim that the original documents were inerrant, unless 
we could claim also that they had been inerrantly trans- 
mitted ? Apparently Coleridge thought that no one would 
ever claim that. Coleridge wrote also concerning the Church. 
His volume on The Constitution of Church and State appeared 
in 1830. It is the least satisfactory of his works. The 
vacillation of Coleridge's own course showed that upon this 
point his mind was never clear. Arnold also, though in a 
somewhat different way, was zealous for the theory that 
Church and State are really identical, the Church being 
merely the State in its educational and religious aspect and 
organisation. If Thomas Arnold's moral earnestness and his 
generous spirit could not save this theory from being 
chimerical, no better result was to be expected from Coleridge. 

The Oriel School 

It has often happened in the history of the English univer- 
sities that a given college has become, through its body of 



200 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

tutors and students, through its common-room talk and 
Hterary work, the centre, for the time, of a movement of 
thought which gives leadership to the college. In this 
manner it has been customary to speak of the group of men 
who, before the rise of the Oxford Movement, gathered at 
Oriel College, as the Oriel School. Newman and Keble were 
both Oriel tutors. The Oriel men were of distinctly liberal 
tendency. There were men of note among them. There 
was Whately, Archbishop of Dublin after 1831, and Copleston, 
from whom both Keble and Newman owned that they learned 
much. There was Arnold, subsequently Headmaster of Rugby. 
There was Hampden, Professoi of Divinity after 1836. The 
school was called from its liberalism the Noetic school. 
Whether this epithet contained more of satire or of complac- 
ency it is difficult to say. These men arrested attention and 
filled some of the older academic and ecclesiastical heads with 
alarm. Without disrespect one may say that it is difficult 
now to understand the commotion which they made. Arnold 
had a truly beautiful character. What he might have done 
as Professor of Ecclesiastical History in Oxford was never 
revealed, for he died in 1842. Whately, viewed as a noetic, 
appears commonplace. 

Perhaps the only one ot the group upon whom we need 
dwell was Hampden. In his Hampton Lectures of 1832, 
under the title of The Scholastic Philosophy considered in 
its Relation to Christian Theology, he assailed what had long 
been the very bulwark of traditionalism. His idea was to 
show how the vast fabric of scholastic theology had grown 
up, particularly what contributions had been made to it in 
the Middle Age. The traditional dogma is a structure reared 
upon the logical terminology of the patristic and mediaeval 
schools. It has little foundation in Scripture and no response 
in the religious consciousness. We have here the application, 
within set limits, of the thesis which Harnack in our own time 
has applied in a universal way. Hampden's opponents were 
not wrong in saying that his method would dissolve, not merely 
that particular system of theology, but all creeds and theo- 
logies whatsoever. Patristic, mediaeval CathoUc theology 



vi.j THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 201 

and scholastic Protestantism, no less, would go down before 
it. A pamphlet attributed to Newman, published in 1836, 
precipitated a discussion which, for bitterness, has rarely been 
surpassed in the melancholy history of theological dispute. 
The excitement went to almost unheard of lengths. In the 
controversy the Archbishop, Dr. Howley, made but a poor 
figure. The Duke of Wellington did not add to his fame. 
Wilberforce and Newman never cleared themselves of the 
suspicion of indirectness. This was, however, after the 
opening of the Oxford Movement. 

Erskine and Campbell 

The period from 1820 to 1850 was one of religious and 
intellectual activity in Scotland as well. Tulloch depicts 
with a Scotsman's patriotism the movement which centres 
about the names of Erskine and Campbell. Pfleiderer also 
judges that their contribution was as significant as any made 
to dogmatic theology in Great Britain in the nineteenth 
century. They achieved the same reconstruction of the 
doctrine of salvation which had been effected by Kant and 
Schleiermacher. At their hands the doctrine was rescued 
from that forensic externality into which Calvinism had de- 
generated. It was given again its quality of ethical inwardness, 
and based directly upon religious experience. High Lutheran- 
ism had issued in the same externality in Germany before 
Kant and Schleiermacher, and the New England theology 
before Channing and Bushnell. The merits of Christ achieved 
an external salvation, of which a man became participant 
practically upon condition of assent to certain propositions. 
Similarly, in the Catholic revival, salvation was conceived 
as an external and future good, of which a man became 
participant through the sacraments applied to him by priests 
in apostolical succession. In point of externality there was 
not much to choose between views which were felt to be 
radically opposed the one to the other. 

Erskine was not a man theologically educated. He led a 
peculiarly secluded life. He was an advocate by profession, 



202 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

but, withdrawing from that career, virtually gave himself up 
to meditation. Campbell was a minister of the Established 
Church of Scotland in a remote village, Row, upon the Gare 
Loch. When he was convicted of heresy and driven from 
the ministry, he also devoted himself to study and authorship. 
Both men seem to have come to their results largely from 
the application of their own sound religious sense to the 
Scriptures. That the Scottish Church should have rejected 
the truth for which these men contended was the heaviest 
blow which it could have inflicted on itself. Thereby it 
arrested its own healthy development. It perpetuated its 
traditional view, somewhat as New England orthodoxy was 
given a new lease of hfe through the partisanship which the 
Unitarian schism engendered. The matter was not mended 
at the time of the great rupture of the Scottish Church in 1843. 
That body which broke away from the Establishment, and 
achieved a purely ecclesiastical control of its own clergy, won, 
indeed, by this means the name of the Free Church, though, 
in point of theological opinion, it was far from represent- 
ing the more free and progressive element. TuUoch pays a 
beautiful tribute to the character of Erskine, whom he knew. 
Quiet, brooding, introspective, he read his Bible and his own 
soul, and with singular purity of intuition generalised from 
his own experience. Therewith is described, however, both 
the power and the hmitation of his work. His "first book was 
entitled Remarks on the Internal Evidence for the Truth of 
Revealed Religion, 1820. The title itself is suggestive of the 
revolution through which the mind both of Erskine and of 
his age was passing. His book. The Unconditional Freeness of 
the Gospel, appeared in 1828 ; The Brazen Serpent in 1831. 
Men have confounded forgiveness and pardon. They have 
made pardon equivalent to salvation. But salvation is 
character. Forgiveness is only one of the means of it. Sal- 
vation is not a future good. It is a present fellowship with 
God. It is sanctification of character by means of our labour 
and God's love. The fall was the rise of the spirit of freedom. 
Fallen man can never be saved except through glad surrender 
of his childish independence to the truth and goodness of 



VI.] THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 203 

God. Yet that surrender is the preservation and enlargement 
of our independence. It is the secret of true self-reaHsation. 
The sufferings of Christ reveal God's holy love. It is not as 
if God's love had been purchased by the sufferings of his Son. 
On the contrary, it is man who needs to believe in God's 
love, and so be reconciled to the God whom he has feared 
and hated. Christ overcomes sin by obediently enduring 
the suffering which sin naturally entails. He endures it in 
pure love of his brethren. Man must overcome sin in the 
same way. 

Campbell published, so late as 1856, his great work The 
Nature of the Atonement and its Relation to the Remission of 
Sins and Eternal Life. It was the matured result of the reflec- 
tions of a quarter of a century, spent partly in enforced retire- 
ment after 1831. Campbell maintains unequivocally that the 
sacrifice of Christ cannot be understood as a punishment due 
to man's sin, meted out to Christ in man's stead. Viewed 
retrospectively, Christ's work in the atonement is but the 
highest example of a law otherwise universally operative. 
No man can work redemption for his fellows except by enter- 
ing into their condition, as if everything in that condition 
were his own, though much of it may be in no sense his 
due. It is freely borne by him because of his identification 
of himself with them. Campbell lingers in the myth of Christ's 
being the federal head of the humanity. There is something 
pathetic in the struggle of his mind to save phrases and the 
paraphernalia of an ancient view which, however, his funda- 
mental principle rendered obsolete. He struggles to save the 
word satisfaction, though it means nothing in his system 
save that God is satisfied as he contemplates the character 
of Christ. Prospectively considered, the sacrifice of Christ 
effects salvation by its moral powder over men in example 
and inspiration. Vicarious sacrifice, the result of which was 
merely imputed, would leave the sinner just where he was 
before. It is an empty fiction. But the spectacle of suffering 
freely undertaken for our sakes discovers the treasures of 
the divine image in man. The love of God and a man's 
own resolve make him in the end, in fact, that which he 



204 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

has always been in capacity and destiny, a child of God, 
possessed of the secret of a growing righteousness, which is 
itself salvation. 



Maubicb 

Scottish books seem to have been but little read in England 
in that day. It was Maurice who first made the substance of 
Campbell's teaching known in England. Frederick Denison 
Maurice was the son of a Unitarian minister, educated at 
Trinity College, Cambridge, at a time when it was impossible 
for a Nonconformist to obtain a degree. He was ordained 
a priest of the Church of England in 1834, even suffering 
himself to be baptised again. He was chaplain of Lincoln's Inn 
and Professor of Theology in King's College, London. After 
1866 he was Professor of Moral Philosophy in Cambridge, 
though his life-work was over. At the heart of Maurice's 
theology lies the contention to which he gave the name of 
universal redemption. Christ's work is for every man. 
Every man is indeed in Christ. Man's unhappiness lies only 
in the fact that he will not own this fact and hve accordingly. 
Man as man is the child of God. He cannot undo that fact 
or alter that relation if he would. He does not need to become 
a child of God, as the phrase has been. He needs only to 
recognise that he already is such a child. He can never cease 
to bear this relationship. He can only refuse to fulfil it. 
With other words Erskine and Coleridge and Schleiermacher 
had said this same thing. 

For the rest, one may speak briefly of Maurice. He was 
animated by the strongest desire for Church unity, but at 
the back of his mind lay a conception of the Church and an 
insistence upon uniformity which made unity impossible. 
In the light of his own inheritance his ecclesiastical positivism 
seems strange. Perhaps it was the course of his experience 
which made this irrational positivism natural. Few men in 
his generation suffered greater persecutions under the un- 
warranted supposition on the part of contemporaries that 
he had a liberal mind. In reality, few men in his generation 



VI.] THE ENGLISHSPEAKING PEOPLES 205 

had less of a quality which, had he possessed it, would have 
given him peace and joy even in the midst of his persecutions. 
The casual remark above made concerning Campbell is true 
in enhanced degree of Maurice. A large part of the industry 
of a very industrious life was devoted to the effort to convince 
others and himself that those few really wonderful glimpses 
of spiritual truth which he had, had no disastrous conse- 
quences for an inherited system of thought in which they 
certainly did not take their rise. His name was connected 
with the social enthusiasm that inaugurated a new movement 
in England which will claim attention in another paragraph. 

Channing 

Allusion has been made to a revision of traditional theology 
which took place in America also, upon the same general 
lines which we have seen in Schleiermacher and in Campbell. 
The typical figure here, the protagonist of the movement, is 
William EUery Channing. It may be doubted whether there 
has ever been a civilisation more completely controlled by its 
Church and ministers, or a culture more entirely dominated 
by theology, than were those of New England until the 
middle of the eighteenth century. There had been indeed 
a marked decline in religious life. The history of the Great 
Awakening shows that. Remonstrances against the Great 
Awakening show also how men's minds were moving away 
from the theory of the universe which the theology of that 
movement implied. One cannot say that in the preaching of 
Hopkins there is an appreciable relaxation of the Edwardsian 
scheme. Interestingly enough, it was in Newport that 
Channing was born and with Hopkins that he associated 
until the time of his licensure to preach in 1802. Many 
thought that Channing would stand with the most stringent 
of the orthodox. Deism and rationalism had made them- 
selves felt in America after the Revolution. Channing, 
during his years in Harvard College, can hardly have failed 
to come into contact with the criticism of religion from this 
side. There is no such clear influence of current rationalism 



206 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch, 

upon Channing as, for example, upon Schleiermacher. Yet 
here in the West, which most Europeans thought of as a 
wilderness, circumstances brought about the launching of 
this man upon the career of a liberal religious thinker, when 
as yet Schleiermacher had hardly advanced beyond the 
position of the Discourses, when Erskine had not yet written a 
line and Campbell was still a child. Channing became minister 
of the Federal Street Church in Boston in 1803. The appoint- 
ment of Ware as Hollis Professor of Divinity in Harvard 
College took place in 1805. That appointment was the first 
clear indication of the liberal party's strength. Channing's 
Baltimore Address was delivered in 1819. He died in 1847. 
In the schism among the Congregational Churches in New 
England, which before 1819 apparently had come to be re- 
garded by both parties as remediless, Channing took the side 
of the opposition to Calvinistic orthodoxy. He developed 
qualities as controversialist and leader which the gentler aspect 
of his early years had hardly led men to suspect. This 
American liberal movement had been referred to by Belsham 
as related to English Unitarianism. After 1815, in this 
country, by its opponents at least, the movement was con- 
sistently called Unitarian. Channing did with zeal contend 
against the traditional doctrines of the atonement and of 
the trinity. On the other hand, he saw in Christ the perfect 
revelation of God to humanity and at the same time the ideal 
of humanity. He beUeved in Jesus' sinlessness and in his 
miracles, especially in his resurrection. The keynote of 
Channing's character and convictions is found in his sense of 
the inherent greatness of man. Of this feeling his entire 
system is but the unfolding. It was early and deliberately 
adopted by him as a fundamental faith. It remained the 
immovable centre of his reverence and trust amid all the 
inroads of doubt and sorrow. Political interest was as natural 
to Channing's earlier manhood as it had been to Fichte in 
the emergency of the Fatherland. Similarly, in the later 
years of his life, when evils connected with slavery had made 
themselves felt, his participation in the abolitionist agitation 
showed the same enthusiasm and practical bent. He had 



VI.] THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 207 

his dream of communism, his perception of the evils of our 
industrial system, his contempt for charity in place of economic 
remedy. All was for man, all rested upon supreme faith in 
man. That man is endowed with knowledge of the right 
and with the power to realise it, was a fundamental maxim. 
Hence arose Channing's assertion of free-will. The denial of 
free-will renders the sentiment of duty but illusory. In the 
conscience there is both a revelation and a type of God. Its 
suggestions, by the very authority they carry with them, 
declare themselves to be God's law. God, concurring with 
our highest nature, present in its action, can be thought of 
only after the pattern which he gives us in ourselves. What- 
ever revelation God makes of himself, he must deal with us 
as with free beings living under natural laws. Revelation 
must be merely supplementary to those laws. Everything 
arbitrary and magical, everything which despairs of us or 
insults us as moral agents, everything which does not address 
itself to us through reason and conscience, must be excluded 
from the intercourse between God and man. What the 
doctrines of salvation and atonement, of the person of 
Christ and of the influence of the Holy Spirit, as construed 
from this centre would be, may without difficulty be sur- 
mised. The whole of Channing's teaching is bathed -in an 
atmosphere of the reverent love of God which is the very 
source of his enthusiasm for man. 

BUSHNBLL 

A very different man was Horace Bushnell, born in the year 
of Channing's licensure, 1802. He was not bred under the 
influence of the strict Calvinism of his day. His father was 
an Arminian. Edwards had made Arminians detested in 
New England. His mother had been reared in the Episcopal 
Church. She was of Huguenot origin. When about seven- 
teen, while tending a carding-machine, he wrote a paper in 
which he endeavoured to bring Calvinism into logical coher- 
ence and, in the interest of sound reason, to correct St. Paul's 
willingness to be accursed for the sake of his brethren. He 



208 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

graduated from Yale College in 1827. He taught there while 
studying law after 1829. He describes himself at this period 
as sound in ethics and sceptical in religion, the soundness of 
his morals being due to nature and training, the scepticism, 
to the theology in which he was involved. His law studies 
were complete, yet he turned to the ministry. He had been 
bom on the orthodox side of the great contention in which 
Channing was a leader of the liberals in the days of which 
we speak. He never saw any reason to change this relation. 
His clerical colleagues, for half a hfe-time, sought to change it 
for him. In 1833 he was ordained and installed as minister 
of the North Church in Hartford, a pastorate which he never 
left. The process of disintegration of the orthodox body 
was continuing. There was almost as much rancour between 
the old and the new orthodoxy as between orthodox and 
Unitarians themselves. Almost before his career was well 
begun an incurable disease fastened itself upon him. Not 
much later, all the severity of theological strife befell him. 
Between these two we have to think of him doing his work 
and keeping his sense of humour. 

His earliest book of consequence was on Christian Nurture, 
pubUshed in 1846. Consistent Calvinism presupposes in its 
converts mature years. Even an adult must pass through 
waters deep for him. He is not a sinful child of the Father. 
He is a being totally depraved and damned to everlasting 
punishment. God becomes his Father only after he is re- 
deemed. The revivalists' theory Bushnell bitterly opposed. 
It made of religion a transcendental matter which belonged 
on the outside of life, a kind of miraculous epidemic. He 
repudiated the prevailing individualism. He anticipated 
much that is now being said concerning heredity, environ- 
ment and subconsciousness. He revived the sense of the 
Church in which Puritanism had been so sadly lacking. The 
book is a classic, one of the rich treasures which the nineteenth 
century offers to the twentieth. 

Bushnell, so far as one can judge, had no knowledge of Kant. 
He is, nevertheless, dealing with Kant's own problem, of the 
theory of knowledge, in his rather diffuse ' Dissertation on 



VI.] THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 209 

Language,' which is prefixed to the volume which bears the 
title God in Christ, 1849. He was following his living principle, 
the reference of doctrine to conscience. God must be a 
' right God.' Dogma must make no assertion concerning 
God which will not stand this test. Not alone does the 
dogma make such assertions. The Scripture makes them 
as well. How can this be ? What is the relation of language 
to thought and of thought to fact ? How can the language 
of Scripture be explained, and yet the reality of the revelation 
not be explained away ? There is a touching interest which 
attaches to this Hartford minister, working out, alone and 
clumsily, a problem the solution of which the greatest minds 
of the age had been gradually bringing to perfection for three- 
quarters of a century. 

In the year 1848 Bushnell was invited to give addresses 
at the Commencements of three divinity schools : that at 
Harvard, then unqualifiedly Unitarian ; that at Andover, 
where the battle with Unitarianism had been fought ; and 
that at Yale, where Bushnell had been trained. The addresa 
at Cambridge was on the subject of the Atonement ; the one 
at New Haven on the Divinity of Christ, including Bushnell's 
doctrine of the trinity ; the one at Andover on Dogma and 
Spirit, a plea for the cessation of strife. He says squarely 
of the old school theories of the atonement, which represent 
Christ as suffering the penalty of the law in our stead : ' They 
are capable, one and all of them, of no light in which they 
do not ojffend some right sentiment of our moral being. If 
the great Redeemer, in the excess of his goodness, consents 
to receive the penal woes of the world in his person, and if 
that offer is accepted, what does it signify, save that God will 
have his modicum of suffering somehow ; and if he lets the 
guilty go he will yet satisfy himself out of the innocent ? ' 
The vicariousness of love, the identification of the sufferer 
with the sinner, in the sense that the Saviour is involved by 
his desire to help us in the woes which naturally follow sin, 
this Bushnell mightily affirmed. Yet there is no pretence 
that he used vicariousness or satisfaction in the same sense 
in which his adversaries did. He is magnificently free from 

o 



210 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

all such indirection. In the New Haven address there is this 
same combination of fire and light. The chief theological 
value of the doctrine of the trinity, as maintained by the 
New England Calvinistic teachers, had been to furnish the 
dramatis persona', for the doctrine of the atonement. In 
the speculation as to the negotiation of this substitutionary 
transaction, the language of the theologians had degenerated 
into stark tritheism. Edwards, describing the councils of 
the trinity, spoke of the three persons as ' they.' Bushnell 
saw that any proper view of the unity of God made the forensic 
idea of the atonement incredible. He sought to replace the 
ontological notion of the trinity by that of a trinity of re- 
velation, which held for him the practical truths by which 
his faith was nourished, and yet avoided the contradictions 
which the other doctrine presented both to reason and faith. 
Bushnell would have been far from claiming that he was the 
first to make this fight. The American Unitarians had been 
making it for more than a generation. The Unitarian protest 
was wholesome. It was magnificent. It was providential, 
but it paused in negation. It never advanced to construction. 
Bushnell's significance is not that he fought this battle, but 
that he fought it from the ranks of the orthodox Church. 
He fought it with a personal equipment which Charming had 
not had. He was decades later in his work. He took up 
the central religious problem when Channing's successors 
were following either Emerson or Parker. 

The Andover address consisted in the statement of Bush- 
nell's views of the causes which had led to the schism in the 
New England Church. A single quotation may give the key- 
note of the discourse : — ' We had on our side an article of the 
creed which asserted a metaphysical trinity. That made the 
assertion of the metaphysical unity inevitable and desirable. 
We had theories of atonement, of depravity, of original sin, 
which required the appearance of antagonistic theories. On 
our side, theological culture was so limited that we took what 
was really only our own opinion for the unalterable truth of 
God. On the other side, it was so limited that men, perceiv- 
ing the insuflficiency of dogma, took the opposite contention 



VI.] THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 211 

with the same seriousness and totaUty of conviction. They 
asserted Hberty, as indeed they must, to vindicate their revolt. 
They produced, meantime, the most intensely human and, 
in that sense, the most intensely opinionated religion ever 
invented.' 

The Catholic Revival 

The Oxford Movement has been spoken of as a reaction 
against the so-called Oriel Movement, a conservative tendency 
over against an intellectualist and progressive one. In a 
measure the personal animosities within the Oxford circle 
may be accounted for in this way. The Tractarian Move- 
ment, however, which issued, on the one hand, in the going 
over of Newman to the Church of Rome and, on the other, 
in a great revival of Catholic principles within the Anglican 
Church itself, stands in a far larger setting. It was not merely 
an English or insular movement. It was a wave from a con- 
tinental flood. On its own showing it was not merely an 
ecclesiastical movement. It had political and social aims as 
well. There was a universal European reaction against the 
Enlightenment and the Revolution. That reaction was not 
simple, but complex. It was a revolt of the conservative 
spirit from the new ideals which had been suddenly trans- 
lated into portentous realities. It was marked everywhere 
by hatred of the eighteenth century with all its ways and 
works. On the one side we have the revolutionary thesis, 
the rights of man, the authority of reason, the watchwords 
liberty, equality, fraternity. On the other side stood forth 
those who were prepared to assert the meaning of community, 
the continuity of history, spiritual as well as civil authority 
as the basis of order, and order as the condition of the highest 
good. In literature the tendency appears as romanticism, in 
politics as legitimism, in religion as ultramontanism. Le 
Maistre with his U6glise galUcune du Pape ; Chateaubriand 
with his Ginie du Christianisme ; Lamennais with his Essai 
sur V Indifference en Matidre de Religion, were, from 1820 to 
1860, the exponents of a view which has had prodigious con- 
sequences for France and Italy. The romantic movement 



212 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

arose outside of Catholicism. It was impersonated in Herder. 
Friedrich Schlegel, Werner and others went over to the Roman 
Church. The pohtical reaction was specifically Latin and 
Catholic. In the lurid light of anarchy Rome seemed to have 
a mission again. Divine right in the State must be restored 
through the Church. The Catholic apologetic saw the Re- 
volution as only the logical conclusion of the premises of the 
Reformation. The reUgious revolt of the sixteenth century, 
the philosophical revolt of the seventeenth, the political 
revolt of the eighteenth, the social revolt of the nineteenth, 
are all parts of one dreadful sequence. As the Church 
lifted up the world after the first flood of the barbarians, 
so must she again hft up the world after the devasta- 
tions made by the more terrible barbarians of the eighteenth 
century. England had indeed stood a little outside of the 
cyclone which had devastated the world from Corunna to 
Moscow and from the Channel to the Pyramids, but she 
had been exhausted in putting down the revolution. Only 
God's goodness had preserved England. The logic of Puritan- 
ism would have been the same. Indeed, in England the 
State was weaker and worse than were the states upon the 
Continent. For since 1688 it had been a popular and con- 
stitutional monarchy. In Frederick William's phrase, its 
sovereign took his crow^n from the gutter. The Church was 
through and through Erastian, a creature of the State. 
Bishops were made by party representatives. Acts like the 
Reform Bills, the course of the Government in the matter of 
the Irish Church, were steps which would surely bring England 
to the pass which France had reached in 1789. The source 
of such acts was wrong. It was with the people. It was in 
men, not in God. It was in reason, not in authority. It 
would be difficult to overstate the strength of this reactionary 
sentiment in important circles in England at the end of the 
third decade of the nineteenth century. 

The Oxford Movement 

In so far as that complex of causes just alluded to made 
of the Oxford Movement or the Catholic revival a movement 



VI.J THE ENGLISHSPEAKING PEOPLES 213 

of life, ecclesiastical, social and political as well, its history 
falls outside the purpose of this book. We proposed to deal 
with the history of thought. Reactionary movements have 
frequently got on without much thought. They have left 
little deposit of their own in the realm of ideas. Their avowed 
principle has been that of recurrence to that which has already 
been thought, of fidelity to ideas which have long prevailed. 
This is the reason why the conservatives have not a 
large place in such a sketch as this. It is not that their 
writings liave not often been full of high learning and of the 
subtlest of reasoning. It is only that the ideas about which 
they reason do not belong to the history of the nineteenth 
century. They belong, on the earnest contention of the 
conservatives themselves — those of Protestants, to the history 
of the Reformation — and of Catholics, both Anglican and 
Roman, to the history of the early or mediaeval Church. 

Nevertheless, when with passionate conviction a great man, 
taking the reactionary course, thinks the problem through 
again from his own point of view, then we have a real pheno 
menon in the history of contemporary thought. When such 
an one wrestles before God to give reason to himself and to 
his fellows for the faith that is in him, then the reactionary's 
reasoning is as imposing and suggestive as is any other. He 
leaves in his work an intellectual deposit which must be con- 
sidered. He makes a contribution which must be reckoned 
with, even more seriously, perhaps, by those who dissent from 
it than by those who may agree with it. Such deposit New- 
man and the Tractarian movement certainly did make. They 
offered a rationale of the reaction. They gave to the Catholic 
revival a standing in the world of ideas, not merely in the 
world of action. Whether their reasoning has weight to-day, 
is a question upon which opinion is divided. Yet Newman 
and his compeers, by their character and standing, by their 
distinctively English qualities and by the road of reason 
which they took in the defence of Catholic principles, made 
Catholicism English again, in a sense in which it had not 
been English for three hundred years. Yet though Newman 
brought to the Roman Church in England, on his conversion 



214 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

to it, a prestige and qualities which in thrt communion 
were unequalled, he was never persona grata in that Church. 
Outwardly the Roman Catholic revival in England was not 
in large measure due to Newman and his arguments. It was 
due far more to men like Wiseman and Manning, who were 
not men of argument but of deeds. 

Newman 

John Henry Newman was born in 1801, the son of a London 
banker. His mother was of Huguenot descent. He came 
under Calvinistic influence. Through study especially of 
Romaine On Faith he became the subject of an inward con- 
version, of which in 1864 he wrote : ' T am still more certain 
of it than that I have hands and feet.' Thomas Scott, the 
evangelical, moved him. Before he was sixteen he made a 
collection of Scripture texts in proof of the doctrine of the 
trinity. From Newton On the Prophecies he learned to 
identify the Pope with anti-Christ^ — a doctrine by which, he 
adds, his imagination was stained up to the year 1843. In his 
Apologia y 1865, he declares : ' From the age of fifteen, dogma 
has been a fundamental principle of my religion. I cannot 
enter into the idea of any other sort of religion.' At the age 
of twenty-one, two years after he had taken his degree, he 
came under very different influences. He passed from 
Trinity College to a fellowship in Oriel. To use his own 
phrase, he drifted in the direction of liberalism. He was 
touched by Whately. He was too logical, and also too 
dogmatic, to be satisfied with Whately's position. Of the 
years from 1823 to 1827 Mozley says : ' Probably no one 
who then knew Newman could have told which way he would 
go. It is not certain that he himself knew.' Francis W. 
Newman, Newman's brother, who later became a Unitarian, 
remembering his own years of stress, speaks with embitter- 
ment of his elder brother, who was profoundly uncongenial 
to him. 

The year 1827, in which Keble's Christian Year was pub- 
lished, saw another change in Newman's views. Illness and 



VI.] THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 215 

bereavement came to him with awakening effect. He made 
the acquaintance of Hurrell Froude. Froude brought 
Newman and Keble together. Henceforth Newman bore no 
more traces either of evangehcahsm or of hberahsm. Of Froude 
it is difficult to speak with confidence. His brother, James 
Anthony Froude, the historian, author of the Nemesis of Faith, 
1848, says that he was gifted, brilliant, enthusiastic. Newman 
speaks of him with almost boundless praise. Two volumes 
of his sermons, published after his death in 1836, make the 
impression neither of learning nor judgment. Clearly he 
had charm. Possibly he talked himself into a common- 
room reputation. Newman says : ' Froude made me look 
with admiration toward the Church of Rome.' Keble never 
had felt the liberalism through which Newman had passed. 
Cradled as the Church of England had been in Puritanism, 
the latter was to him simply evil. Opinions differing from 
his own were not simply mistaken, they were sinful. He 
conceived no religious truth outside the Church of England. 
In the Christian Year one perceives an influence which 
Newman strongly felt. It was that of the idea of the sacra- 
mental significance of all natural objects or events. Pusey 
became professor of Hebrew in 1830. He lent the movement 
academic standing, which the others could not give. He 
had been in Germany, and had published an Inquiry into the 
Rationalist Character of German Theology, 1825. He hardly 
did more than expose the ignorance of Rose. He was himself 
denounced as a German rationalist who dared to speak of a 
new era in theology. Pusey, mourning the defection of 
Newman, whom he deeply loved, gathered in 1846 the forces 
of the Anglo-Catholics and continued in some sense a leader 
to the end of his long life in 1882. 

The course of political events was fretting the Conser- 
vatives intolerably. The agitation for the Reform Bill was 
taking shape. Sir Robert Peel, the member for Oxford, had 
introduced a Bill for the emancipation of the Roman Catholics. 
There was violent commotion in Oxford. Keble and New- 
man strenuously opposed the measure. In 1830 there was 
revolution in France. In England the Whigs had come into 



216 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

power. Newman's mind was excited in the last degree. ' The 
vital question,' he says, * is this, how are we to keep the Church 
of England from being liberalised ? ' At the end of 1832 
Newman and Froude went abroad together. On this journey, 
as he lay becalmed in the straits of Bonifacio, he wrote his 
immortal hymn, ' Lead, Kindly Light.' He came home 
assured that he had a work to do. Keble's Assize Sermon on 
the National Apostasy, preached in July 1833, on the Sunday 
after Newman's return to Oxford, kindled the conflagration 
which had been long preparing. Newman conceived the idea 
of the Tracts for the Times as a means of expressing the 
feelings and propagating the opinions which deeply moved 
him. ' From the first,' he says, ' my battle was with Uberalism. 
By liberalism I mean the anti-dogmatic principle. Secondly, 
my aim was the assertion of the visible Church with sacra- 
ments and rites and definite religious teaching on the founda- 
tion of dogma ; and thirdly, the assertion of the AngUcan 
Church as opposed to the Church of Rome.' Newman grew 
greatly in personal influence. His afternoon sermons at 
St. Mary's exerted spiritual power. They deserved so to do. 
Here he was at his best. All of his strength and Uttle of his 
weakness shows. His insight, his subtility, his pathos, his 
love of souls, his marvellous play of dramatic as well as of 
spiritual faculty, are in evidence. Keble and Pusey were 
busying themselves with the historical aspects of the question. 
Pusey began the Library of the Fathers, the most elaborate 
literary monument of the movement. Nothing could be 
more amazing than the uncritical quality of the whole per- 
formance. The first check to the movement came in 1838, 
when the Bishop of Oxford animadverted upon the Tracts. 
Newman professed his willingness to stop them. The Bishop 
did not insist. Newman's own thought moved rapidly on- 
ward in the only course which was still open to it. 

Newman had been bred in the deepest reverence for Scrip- 
ture. In a sense that reverence never left him, though it 
changed its form. He saw that it was absurd to appeal to the 
Bible in the old way as an infallible source of doctrine. How 
could truth be infallibly conveyed in defective and fallible 



VI.] THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 217 

expressions ? Newman's own studies in criticism, by no 
means profound, led him to this correct conclusion. This 
was the end for him of evangelical Protestantism. The re- 
course was then to the infallible Church. Infallible guide 
and authority one must have. Without these there can be 
no religion. To trust to reason and conscience as conveying 
something of the light of God is impossible. To wait in 
patience and to labour in fortitude for the increase of that 
light is unendurable. One must have certainty. There 
can be no certainty by the processes of the mind from 
within. This can come only by miraculous certification from 
without. 

According to Newman the authority of the Church should 
never have been impaired in the Reformation. Or rather, 
in his view of that movement, this authority, for truly Chris 
tian men, had never been impaired. The intellect is aggres- 
sive, capricious, untrustworthy. Its action in reKgious matters 
is corrosive, dissolving, sceptical. ' Man's energy of intellect 
must be smitten hard and thrown back by infallible authority, 
if religion is to be saved at all.' Newman's philosophy was 
utterly sceptical, although, unlike most absolute philosophical 
sceptics, he had a deep religious experience. The most 
complete secularist, in his negation of religion, does not 
differ from Newman in his low opinion of the value of the 
surmises of the mind as to the transcendental meaning of Ufe 
and the world. He differs from Newman only in lacking that 
which to Newman was the most indefeasible thing which 
he had at all, namely, religious experience. Newman was 
the child of his age, though no one ever abused more fiercely 
the age of which he was the child. He supposed that he 
believed in religion on the basis of authority. Quite the con- 
trary, he believed in religion because he had religion or, as 
he says, in a magnificent passage in one of his parochial 
sermons, because religion had him. His scepticism forbade 
him to recognise that this was the basis of his belief. His 
diremption of human nature was absolute. The soul was of 
God. The mind was of the devil. He dare not trust his 
own intellect concerning this inestimable treasure of his 



218 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

experience. He dare not trust intellect at all. He knew 
not whither it might lead him. The mind cannot be broken 
to the belief of a power above it. It must have its stiff neck 
bent to recognise its Creator. 

His whole book, The Grammar of Assent, 1870, is pervaded 
by the intensest philosophical scepticism. Scepticism supplies 
its motives, determines its problems, necessitates its dis- 
tinctions, rules over the succession and gradation of its 
arguments. The whole aim of the work is to withdraw 
rehgion and the proofs of it, from the region of reason into the 
realm of conscience and imagination, where the arguments 
which reign may satisfy personal experience without alleging 
objective validity or being able to bear the criticism which 
tests it. Again, he is the perverse, unconscious child of the 
age which he curses. Had not Kant and Schleiermacher, 
Coleridge and Channing sought, does not Ritschl seek, to 
remove religion from the realm of metaphysics and to bring 
it within the realm of experience ? They had, however, 
pursued the same end by different means. One is reminded 
of that saying of Gretchen concerning Mephistopheles : ' He 
says the same tiling with the pastor, only in different words.' 
Newman says the same words, but means a different thing. 

Assuming the reduction of religion to experience, in which 
Kant and Schleiermacher would have agreed, and asserting 
the worthlessness of mentality, which they would have denied, 
we are not surprised to hear Newman say that without 
Catholicism doubt is invincible. * The Church's infallibility 
is the provision adopted by the mercy of the Creator to 
preserve religion in the world. Outside the Catholic Church 
all things tend to atheism. The Catholic Church is the one 
face to face antagonist, able to withstand and baffle the fierce 
energy of passion and the all-dissolving scepticism of the mind. 
I am a Catholic by virtue of my belief in God. If I should be 
asked why I beheve in God, I should answer, because I believe 
in myself. I find it impossible to believe in myself, without 
behaving also in the existence of him who lives as a personal, 
all-seeing, all-judging being in my conscience.' These passages 
are mainly taken from the Apologia, written long after New- 



VI.] THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 219 

man had gone over to the Roman Church. They perfectly 
describe the attitude of his mind toward the AngUcan Church, 
so long as he believed this, and not the Roman, to be the true 
Church. He had once thought that a man could hold a 
position midway between the Protestantism which he re- 
pudiated and the Romanism which he still resisted. He 
stayed in the via media so long as he could. But in 1839 he 
began to have doubts about the Anglican order of succession. 
The catholicity of Rome began to overshadow the apostolicity 
of Anglicanism. The Anglican formularies cannot be at 
variance with the teachings of the authoritative and universal 
Church. This is the problem which the last of the Tracts, 
Tract Ninety y sets itself. It is one of those which Newman 
wrote. One must find the sense of the Roman Church in the 
Thirty-Nine Articles. This tract is prefaced by an extra- 
ordinary disquisition upon reserve in the communication of 
religious knowledge. God's revelations of himself to man- 
kind have always been a kind of veil. Truth is the reward 
of holiness. The Fathers were holy men. Therefore what 
the Fathers said must be true. The principle of reserve the 
Articles illustrate. They do not mean what they say. They 
were written in an uncatholic age, that is, in the age of the 
Reformation. They were written by Catholic men. Else 
how can the Church of England be now a Catholic Church ? 
Through their reserve they were acceptable in an imcatholic 
age. They cannot be uncatholic in spirit, else how should 
they be identical in meaning with the great Catholic creeds ? 
Then follows an exposition of every important article of the 
thirty-nine, an effort to interpret each in the sense of the 
Roman Catholic Church of to-day. Four tutors published 
a protest against the tract. Formal censure was passed upon 
it. It was now evident to Newman that his place in the 
leadership of the Oxford Movement was gone. From this 
time, the spring of 1841, he says he was on his deathbed as 
regards the Church of England. He withdrew to Littlemore 
and established a brotherhood there. In the autumn of 
1843 he resigned the parochial charge of St. Mary's at Oxford. 
On the 9th of October 1845 he was formally admitted to the 



220 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [oh. 

Roman Church. On the 6th of October Ernest Renan had 
formally severed his connexion with that Church. 

It is a strange thing that in his Essay on the Develop- 
ment of Christian Doctrine, written in 1845, Newman 
himself should have advanced substantially Hampden's 
contention. Here are written many things concerning 
the development of doctrine which commend themselves 
to minds conversant with the application of historical criti- 
cism to the whole dogmatic structure of the Christian 
ages. The purpose is with Newman entirely polemical, 
the issue exactly that which one would not have foreseen. 
Precisely because the development of doctrine is so obvious, 
because no historical point can be found at which the 
growth of doctrine ceased and the rule of faith was once 
for all settled, therefore an infallible authority outside of 
the development must have existed from the beginning, 
to provide a means of distinguishing true development 
from false. This infallible guide is, of course, the Church. 
It seems incredible that Newman could escape applying to 
the Church the same argument which he had so skilfully 
applied to Scripture and dogmatic history. Similar is the 
case with the argument of the Grammar of Assent. * No man 
is certain of a truth who can endure the thought of its con- 
trary.' If the reason why I cannot endure the thought of 
the contradictory of a belief which I have made my own, is 
that so to think brings me pain and darkness, this does not 
prove my truth. If my belief ever had its origin in reason, 
it must be ever refutable by reason. It is not corroborated 
by the fact that I do not wish to see anything that would 
refute it.^ This last fact may be in the highest degree an act 
of arbitrariness. To make the impossibiUty of thinking the 
opposite, the test of truth, and then to shut one's eyes to those 
evidences which might compel one to think the opposite, 
is the essence of irrationality. One attains by this method 
indefinite assertiveness, but not certainty. Newman Uved 
in some seclusion in the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in Birming- 
ham for many years. A few distinguished men, and a 
1 Fairbairn, Catholicismy Roman and Anglican, p. 157 f. 



VI.] THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 221 

number of his followers, in all not more than a hundred 
and fifty, went over to the Roman Church after him. The 
defection was never so great as, in the first shock, it was sup- 
posed that it would be. The outward influence of Newman 
upon the Anglican Church then ceased. But the ideas which 
he put forth have certainly been of great influence in that 
Church to this day. Most men know the portrait of the great 
cardinal, the wide forehead, ploughed deep with horizontal 
furrows, the pale cheek, down which ' long lines of shadow slope, 
which years and anxious thought and suffering give.' One 
looks into the wonderful face of those last days — Newman 
lived to his ninetieth year — and wonders if he found in the 
infallible Church the peace which he so earnestly sought. 

Modernism 

It was said that the Oxford Movement furnished the 
rationale of the reaction. Many causes, of course, combine 
to make the situation of the Roman Church and the status 
of religion in the Latin countries of the Continent the lament- 
able one that it is. That position is worst in those countries 
where the Roman Church has most nearly had free play. 
The alienation both of the intellectual and civil life from 
organised religion is grave. That the Roman Church occupies 
in England to-day a position more favourable than in almost 
any nation on the Continent, and better than it occupied in 
England at the beginning of the nineteenth century, is due 
in large measure to the general influence of the movement 
with which we have been dealing. The Anglican Church 
was at the beginning of the nineteenth century preponder- 
antly evangelical, low -church and conscious of itself as 
Protestant. At the beginning of the twentieth it is dom- 
inantly ritualistic and disposed to minimise its relation to 
the Reformation. This resurgence of Catholic principles is 
another effect of the movement of which we speak. Other 
factors must have wrought for this result besides the body 
of arguments which Newman and his compeers offered. 
The argument itself, the mere intellectual factor, is not 



222 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

adequate. There is an inherent contradiction in the efifort 
to ground in reason an authority which is to take the place 
of reason. Yet round and round this circle all the labours 
of John Henry Newman go. Cardinal Manning felt this. 
The victory of the Church was not to be won by argument. 
It is well known that Newman opposed the decree of infalli- 
bility. It cannot be said that upon this point his arguments 
had great weight. If one assumes that truth comes to us 
externally through representatives of God, and if the truth 
is that which they assert, then in the last analysis what they 
assert is truth. If one has given in to such authority because 
one distrusts his reason, then it is querulous to complain that 
the deliverances of authority do not comport with reason. 
There may be, of course, the greatest interest in the struggle 
as to the instance in which this authority is to be lodged. 
This interest attaches to the age-long struggle between 
Pope and Council. It attaches to the dramatic struggle of 
Dollinger, Dupanloup, Lord Acton and the rest, in 1870. 
Once the Church has spoken there is, for the advocate of 
authoritative religion, no logic but to submit. 

Similarly as to the Encyclical and Syllabus of Errors of 1864, 
which forecast the present conflict concerning Modernism. 
The Syllabus had a different atmosphere from that which 
any Enghshman in the sixties would have given it. Had 
not Newman, however, made passionate warfare on the 
Uberalism of the modem world ? Was it not merely a ques- 
tion of degrees ? Was Gladstone's attitude intelligible ? The 
contrast of two principles in Ufe and religion, the principles 
of authority and of the spirit, is being brought home to 
men's consciousness as it has never been before. One reads 
II Santo and learns concerning the death of Fogazzaro, one 
looks into the literature relating to Tyrrell, one sees the fate 
of Loisy, comparing the really majestic achievement in his 
works and the spirit of \n^& Simple Reflections with, the Encyclical 
Pascendij 1907. One understands why these men have done 
what they could to remain within the Roman Church. One 
recalls the attitude of Dollinger to the inauguration of the Old 
Catholic Movement, reflects upon the relative futility of the 



VI.] THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 223 

Old Catholic Church, and upon the position of Hyacinthe 
Loyson. One appreciates the feeling of these men that it is 
impossible, from without, to influence as they would the Church 
which they have loved. The present difficulty of influencing 
it from within seems almost insuperable. The history of 
Modernism as an effective contention in the world of Chris- 
tian thought seems scarcely begun. The opposition to 
Modernism is not yet a part of the history of thought. 



Robertson 

In no life are reflected more perfectly the spiritual con- 
flicts of the fifth decade of the nineteenth century than in that 
of Frederick W. Robertson. No mind worked itself more 
triumphantly out of these difficulties. Descended from a 
family of Scottish soldiers, evangelical in piety, a student 
in Oxford in 1837, repelled by the Oxford Movement, he 
undertook his ministry under a morbid sense of responsi- 
bility. He reacted violently against his evangelicalism. He 
travelled abroad, read enormously, was plunged into an 
agony which threatened mentally to xmdo him. He took 
his charge at Brighton in 1847, still only thirty-one years 
old, and at once shone forth in the splendour of his genius. 
A martyr to disease and petty persecution, dying at thirty 
seven, he yet left the impress of one of the greatest 
preachers whom the Church of England has produced. He 
left no formal literary work such as he had designed. Of 
his sermons we have almost none from his own manu- 
scripts. Yet his influence is to-day almost as intense as 
when the sermons were delivered. It is, before all, the 
wealth and depth of his thought, the reality of the content 
of the sermons, which commands admiration. They are 
a classic refutation of the remark that one cannot preach 
theology. Out of them, even in their fragmentary state, a 
well-articulated system might be made. He brought to his 
age the living message of a man upon whom the best light 
of his age had shone. 



224 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

Phillips Brooks 

Something of the same sort may be said concerning PhilHps 
Brooks. He inherited on his father's side the sober ration- 
ahsm and the humane and secular interest of the earher 
Unitarianism, on his mother's side the intensity of evangehcal 
pietism with the Calvinistic form of thought. The conflict 
of these opposing tendencies in New England was at that 
time so great that Brooks's parents sought refuge with the 
low-church element in the Episcopal Church. Brooks's 
education at Harvard College, where he took his degree 
in 1855, as also at Alexandria, and still more, his reading 
and experience, made him sympathetic with that which, in 
England in those years, was called the Broad Church party. 
He was deeply influenced by Campbell and Maurice. Later 
well known in England, he was the compeer of the best 
spirits of his generation there. Deepened by the experience 
of the great war, he held in succession two pulpits of large 
influence, dying as Bishop of Massachusetts in 1893. There 
is a theological note about his preaching, as in the case of 
Robertson. Often it is the same note. Brooks had passed 
through no such crisis as had Robertson. He had flowered 
into the greatness of rational belief. His sermons are a 
contribution to the thinking of his age. We have much 
flnished material of this kind from his own hand, and a 
book or two besides. His service through many years as 
preacher to his university was of inestimable worth. The 
presentation of ever-advancing thought to a great public 
constituency is one of the most difficult of tasks. It is also 
one of the most necessary. The fusion of such thoughtful- 
ness with spiritual impulse has rarely been more perfectly 
achieved than in the preaching of Phillips Brooks. 

The Broad Church 

We have used the phrase, the Broad Church party. Stanley 
had employed the adjective to describe the real character of 
the English Church, over against the antithesis of the Low 



VI.] THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 225 

Church and the High. The designation adhered to a group 
of which Stanley was himself a type. They were not bound 
together in a party. They had no ecclesiastical end in view. 
They were of a common spirit. It was not the spirit of 
evangelicalism. Still less was it that of the Tractarians. It 
was that which Robertson had manifested. It aimed to hold 
the faith with an open mind in all the intellectual movement 
of the age. Maurice should be enumerated here, with reser- 
vations. Kingsley beyond question belonged to this group. 
There was great ardour among them for the improvement of 
social conditions, a sense of the social mission of Christianity. 
There grew up what was called a Christian Socialist move- 
ment, which, however, never attained or sought a political 
standing. The Broad Church movement seemed, at one 
time, assured of ascendancy in the Church of England. Its 
aims appeared congruous with the spirit of the times. Yet 
Dean Fremantle esteems himself perhaps the last survivor 
of an illustrious company. 

The men who in 1860 published the volume known as 
Essays and Reviews would be classed with the Broad Church. 
In its authorship were associated seven scholars, mostly 
Oxford men. Some one described Essays and Reviews as 
the Tract Ninety of the Broad Church. It stirred public 
sentiment and brought the authors into conflict with 
authority in a somewhat similar way. The living antagonism 
of the Broad Church was surely with the Tractarians rather 
than with the evangelicals. Yet the most signiticant of the 
essays, those on miracles and on prophecy, touched opinions 
common to both these groups. Jowett, later Master of 
Balliol, contributed an essay on the 'Interpretation of 
Scripture.' It hardly belongs to Jowett's best wovk. Yet 
the controversy then precipitated may have had to do 
with Jowett's adherence to Platonic studies instead of his 
devoting himself to theology. The most decisive of the 
papers was that of Baden Powell on the ' Study of the 
Evidences of Christianity.' It was mainly a discussion of 
the miracle. It was radical and conclusive. The essay 
closes with an allusion to Darwin's Origin of Species, which 

P 



226 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

had then Just appeared. Baden Powell died shortly after its 
publication. The fight came on Rowland Williams's paper 
upon Bunsen's Biblical Researches, It was really upon the 
prophecies and their use in ' Christian Evidences.' Baron 
Bunsen was not a great archaeologist, but he brought to the 
attention of English readers that which was being done in 
Germany in this field. Williams used the archaeological 
material to rectify the current theological notions concerning 
ancient history. A certain type of English mind has always 
shown zeal for the interpretation of prophecy. Williams's 
thesis, briefly put, was this : the Bible does not always give 
the history of the past with accuracy ; it does not give the 
history of the future at all ; prophecy means spiritual teach- 
ing, not secular prognostication. A reader of our day may 
naturally feel that Wilson, with his paper on the ' National 
Church,' made the greatest contribution. He built indeed 
upon Coleridge, but he had a larger horizon. He knew the 
arguments of the great Frenchmen of his day and of their 
English imitators who, in Benn's phrase, narrowed and per- 
verted the ideal of a world-wide humanity into that of a 
Church founded on dogmas and administered by clericals. 
Wilson argued that in Jesus' teaching the basis of the 
religious community is ethical. The Church is but the 
instrument for carrying out the will of God as manifest in 
the moral law. The realisation of the will of God must 
extend beyond the limits of the Church's activity, however 
widely these are drawn. There arose a violent agitation. 
Williams and Wilson were prosecuted. The case was tried 
in the Court of Arches. Williams was defended by no 
less a person than Fitzjames Stephen. The two divines 
were sentenced to a year's suspension. This decision was 
reversed by the Lord Chancellor. Fitzjames Stephen had 
argued that if the men most interested in the Church, namely, 
its clergy, are the only men who may be punished for serious 
discussion of the facts and truths of religion, then respect 
on the part of the world for the Church is at an end. By 
this discussion the English clergy, even if Anglo-Catholic, 
are in a very different position from the Roman priests, 



VI.] THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 227 

over whom encyclicals, even if not executed, are alvrays 
suspended. 

Similar was the issue in the case of Colenso, Bishop of Natal. 
Equipped mainly with Cambridge mathematics added to purest 
self-devotion, he had been sent out as a missionary bishop. In 
the process of the translation of the Pentateuch for his Zulus, 
he had come to reflect upon the problem which the Old Testa- 
ment presents. In a manner which is altogether marvellous 
he worked out critical conclusions parallel to those of Old 
Testament scholars on the Continent. He was never really 
an expert, but in his main contention he was right. He 
adhered to his opinion despite severe pressure and was not 
removed from the episcopate. With such guarantees it would 
be strange indeed if we could not say that biblical studies 
entered in Great Britain, as also in America, on a development 
in which scholars of these nations are not behind the best 
scholars of the world. The trials for heresy of Robertson 
Smith in Edinburgh and of Dr. Briggs in New York have now 
little living interest. Yet biblical studies in Scotland and 
America were incalculably furthered by those discussions. The 
publication of a book like Supernatural Religion, 1872, illus- 
trates a proclivity not uncommon in self-conscious liberal 
circles, for taking up a contention just when those who made 
it and have lived with it have decided to lay it down. How- 
ever, the names of Hatch and Lightfoot alone, not to mention 
the living, are sufl&cient to warrant the assertions above made. 



More than once in these chapters we have spoken of the 
service rendered to the progress of Christian thought by the 
criticism and interpretation of religion at the hands of literary 
men. That country and age may be esteemed fortunate in 
which religion occupies a place such that it compels the atten- 
tion of men of genius. In the history of culture this has 
by no means always been the case. That these men do not 
always speak the language of edification is of minor con- 
sequence. What is of infinite worth is that the largest 



228 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

minds of the generation shall engage themselves with the 
topic of religion. A history of thought concerning Chris- 
tianity cannot but reckon with the opinions, for example, of 
Carlyle, of Emerson, of Matthew Arnold — to mention only 
types. 



Caklyle 

Carlyle has pictured for us his early home at Ecclefechan 
on the Border; his father, a stone mason of the highest char- 
acter ; his mother with her frugal, pious ways ; the minister, 
from whom he learned Latin, 'the priestliest man I ever 
beheld in any ecclesiastical guise.' The picture of his mother 
never faded from his memory. Carlyle was destined for the 
Church. Such had been his mother's prayer. He took his 
arts course in Edinburgh. In the university, he says, ' there 
was much talk about progress of the species, dark ages, and 
the like, but the hungry young looked to their spiritual nurses 
and were bidden to eat the east wind.* He entered Divinity 
Hall, but already, in 1816, prohibitive doubts had arisen in his 
mind. Irving sought to help him. Irving was not the man 
for the task. The Christianity of the Church had become in- 
tellectually incredible to Carlyle. For a time he was acutely 
miserable, bordering upon despair. He has described his 
spiritual deliverance : ' Precisely that befel me which the 
Methodists call their conversion, the deliverance of their souls 
from the devil and the pit. There burst forth a sacred flame 
of joy in me.' With Sartor Besartits his message to the 
world began. It was printed in Frasefs Magazine in 1833, 
but not published separately until 1838. His difficulty in 
finding a publisher embittered him. Style had something 
to do with this, the newness of his message had more. Then 
for twenty years he poured forth his message. Never did a 
man carry such a pair of eyes into the great world of London 
or set a more peremptory mark upon its notabilities. His 
best work was done before 1851. His later years were 
darkened with much misery of body. No one can allege that 
he ever had a happy mind. 



VI.] THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 229 

He was a true prophet, but, Elijah-like, he seemed to him- 
self to be alone. His derision of the current religion seems 
sometimes needless. Yet even that has the grand note of 
sincerity. What he desired he in no small measure achieved 
— that his readers should be arrested and feel themselves face 
to face with reality. His startling intuition, his intellectual 
uprightness, his grasp upon things as they are, his passion for 
what ought to be, made a great impression upon his age. 
It was in itself a religious influence. Here was a mind of 
giant force, of sternest truthfulness. His untruths were 
those of exaggeration. His injustices were those of prejudice. 
He invested many questions of a social and moral, of a political 
and religious sort with a nobler meaning than they had had 
before. His French Revolution, his papers on Chartism, his 
unceasing comment on the troubled life of the years from 
1830 to 1865, are of highest moment for our understanding 
of the growth of that social feeling in the midst of which we 
live and work. In his brooding sympathy with the down- 
trodden he was a great inaugurator of the social movement. 
He felt the curse of an aristocratic society, yet no one has 
told us with more drastic truthfulness the evils of our demo- 
cratic institutions. His word was a great corrective for 
much ' rose-water ' optimism which prevailed in his day. 
The note of hope is, however, often lacking. The mythology 
of an absentee God had faded from him. Yet the God who 
was clear to his mature consciousness, clear as the sun in the 
heavens, was a God over the world, to Judge it inexorably. 
Again, it is not difficult to accumulate evidence in his words 
which looks toward pantheism ; but what one may call the 
religious benefit of pantheism, the sense that God is in his 
world, Carlyle often loses. 

Materialism is to-day so deeply discredited that we find it 
difficult to realise that sixty years ago the problem wore a 
different look. Carlyle was never weary of pouring out the 
vials of his contempt on ' mud-philosophies ' and exalting 
the spirit as against matter. Never was a man more opposed 
to the idea of a godless world, in which man is his own chief 
end and his sensual pleasures the main aims of his existence. 



230 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

His insight into the consequences of our commerciahsm and 
luxury and absorption in the outward never fails. Man is 
God's son, but the effort to realise that sonship in the joy and 
trust of a devout heart and in the humble round of daily life 
sometimes seems to him cant or superstition. The humble 
life of godliness made an unspeakable appeal to him. He 
had known those who lived that life. His love for them was 
imperishable. Yet he had so recoiled from the superstitions 
and hypocrisies of others, the Eternal in his majesty was so 
ineffable, all effort to approach him so unworthy, that almost 
instinctively he would call upon the man who made the effort, 
to desist. So magnificent, all his life long, had been his 
protest against the credulity and stupidity of men, against 
beliefs which assert the impossible and blink the facts, that, 
for himself, the great objects of faith were held fast to, so to 
say, in their naked verity, with a giant's strength. They were 
half- querulously denied all garment and embodiment, lest 
he also should be found credulous and self-deceived. From 
this titan labouring at the foundations of the world, this 
Samson pulling down temples of the Philistines on his head, 
this Cyclops heaving hills at ships as they pass by, it seems 
a long way to Emerson. Yet Emerson was Carlyle's friend. 

Emebson 

Arnold said in one of his American addresses : ' Besides 
these voices — ^Newman, Carlyle, Goethe — there came to us 
in the Oxford of my youth a voice also from this side of the 
Atlantic, a clear and pure voice which, for my ear at any rate, 
brought a strain as new and moving and unforgetable as those 
others. Lowell has described the apparition of Emerson 
to your young generation here. He was your Newman, your 
man of soul and genius, speaking to your bodily ears, a present 
object for your heart and imagination.' Then he quotes as 
one of the most memorable passages in English speech : 
* Trust thyself. Accept the place which the divine providence 
has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the 
connection of events. Great men have always done so, 



VI.] THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 231 

confiding themselves childlike to the genius of their age, 
betraying a perception which was stirring in their hearts, 
working through their hands, dominating their whole being.' 
Arnold speaks of Carlyle's grim insistence upon labour and 
righteousness but of his scorn of happiness, and then says : 
' But Emerson taught happiness in labour, in righteousness 
and veracity. In all the life of the spirit, happiness and 
eternal hope, that was Emerson's gospel. By his conviction 
that in the life of the spirit is happiness, by his hope and 
expectation that this life of the spirit will more and more 
be understood and will prevail, by this Emerson was great.' 

Seven of Emerson's ancestors were ministers of New 
England churches. He inherited qualities of self-reliance, 
love of liberty, strenuous virtue, sincerity, sobriety and fear- 
less loyalty to ideals. The form of his ideals was modified 
by the glow of transcendentalism which passed over parts 
of New England in the second quarter of the nineteenth 
century, but the spirit in which Emerson conceived the laws 
of life, reverenced them and lived them, was the Puritan 
spirit, only elevated, enlarged and beautified by the poetic 
temperament. Taking his degree from Harvard in 1821, 
despising school teaching, stirred by the passion for spiritual 
leadership, the ministry seemed to offer the fairest field for 
its satisfaction. In 1825 he entered the Divinity School in 
Harvard to prepare himself for the Unitarian ministry. In 
1829 he became associate minister of the Second Unitarian 
Church in Boston. He arrived at the conviction that the 
Lord's Supper was not intended by Jesus to be a permanent 
sacrament. He found his congregation, not unnaturally, 
reluctant to agree with him. He therefore retired from 
the pastoral office. He was always a preacher, though of a 
singular order. His task was to befriend and guide the inner 
life of man. The influences of this period in his life have been 
enumerated as the liberating philosophy of Coleridge, the 
mystical vision of Swedenborg, the intimate poetry of Words- 
worth, the stimulating essays of Carlyle. His address before 
the graduating class of the Divinity School at Cambridge in 
1838 was an impassioned protest against what he called the 



232 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

defects of historical Christianity, its undue rehance upon the 
personal authority of Jesus, its failure to explore the moral 
nature of man. He made a daring plea for absolute self- 
reliance and new inspiration in religion : ' In the soul let 
redemption be sought. Refuse the good models, even those 
which are sacred in the imagination of men. Cast conformity 
behind you. Acquaint men at first hand with deity.' He 
never could have been the power he was by the force of his 
negations. His power lay in the wealth, the variety, the 
beauty and insight with which he set forth the positive side 
of his doctrine of the greatness of man, of the presence of 
God in man, of the divineness of life, of God's judgment and 
mercy in the order of the world. One sees both the power 
and the limitation of Emerson's religious teaching. At the 
root of it lay a real philosophy. He could not philosophise. 
He was always passing from the principle to its application. 
He could not systematise. He speaks of his * formidable 
tendency to the lapidary style.' Granting that one finds his 
philosophy in fragments, just as one finds his interpretation 
of religion in flashes of marvellous insight, both are worth 
searching for, and either, in Coleridge's phrase, finds us, 
whether we search for it or not. 

Arnold 

What shall we say of Matthew Arnold himself ? Without 
doubt the twenty years by which Arnold was Newman's 
junior at Oxford made a great difference in the intellectual 
atmosphere of that place, and of the English world of letters, 
at the time when Arnold's mind was maturing. He was not 
too late to feel the spell of Newman. His mind was hardly 
one to appreciate the whole force of that spell. He was at 
Oxford too early for the full understanding of the limits 
within which alone the scientific conception of the world can 
be said to be true. Arnold often boasted that he was no 
metaphysician. He really need never have mentioned the 
fact. The assumption that whatever is true can be verified 
in the sense of the precise kind of verification which science 



VI.] THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 233 

implies is a very serious mistake. Yet his whole intellectual 
strength was devoted to the sustaining, one cannot say 
exactly the cause of religion, but certainly that of noble 
conduct, and to the assertion of the elation of duty and the 
Joy of righteousness. With all the scorn that Arnold pours 
upon the trust which we place in God's love, he yet holds 
to the conviction that * the power without ourselves which 
makes for righteousness* is one upon which we may in 
rapture rely. 

Arnold had convinced himself that in an age such as ours, 
which will take nothing for granted, but must verify every- 
thing, Christianity, in the old form of authoritative belief in 
supernatural beings and miraculous events, is no longer tenable. 
We must confine ourselves to such ethical truths as can be 
verified by experience. We must reject everything which 
goes beyond these. Religion has no more to do with super- 
natural dogma than with metaphysical philosophy. It has 
nothing to do with either. It has to do with conduct. It is 
folly CO make religion depend upon the conviction of the exis- 
tence of an intelligent and moral governor of the universe, 
as the theologians have done. For the object of faith in the 
ethical sense Arnold coined the phrase : ' The Eternal not 
ourselves whic'i makes for righteousness.' So soon as we go 
beyond this, we enter upon the region of fanciful anthropo- 
morphism, of extra belief, aberglaube, which always revenges 
itself. These are the main contentions of his book, Literature 
and Dogma, 1875. 

One feels the value of Arnold's recall to the sense of the 
literary character of the Scriptural documents, as urged in his 
book. Saint Paul and Protestantism, 1870, and again to the 
sense of the influence which the imagination of mankind has 
had upon religion. One feels the truth of his assertion of our 
ignorance. One feels Arnold's own deep earnestness. It was 
his concern that reason and the will of God should prevail. 
Though he was primarily a literary man, yet his great interest 
was in religion. One feels so sincerely that his main conclusion 
is sound, that it is the more trying that his statement of it 
should be often so perverse and his method of sustaining it 



234 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

so precarious. It is quite certain that the idea of the Eternal 
not ourselves which makes for righteousness is far from 
being the clear idea which Arnold claims. It is far from 
being an idea derived from experience or verifiable in ex- 
perience, in the sense which he asserts. It seems positively 
incredible that Arnold did not know that with this conception 
he passed the boundary of the realm of science and entered 
the realm of metaphysics, which he so abhorred. 

He was the eldest son of Thomas Arnold of Rugby. He 
was educated at Winchester and Rugby and at Balliol College. 
He was Professor of Poetry in Oxford from 1857 to 1867. He 
was an inspector of schools. The years of his best literary 
labour were much taken up in ways which were wasteful of 
his rare powers. He came by literary intuition to an idea of 
Scripture which others had built up from the point of view 
of a theory of knowledge and by investigation of the facts. 
He is the helpless personification of a view of the relation of 
science and religion which has absolutely passed away. Yet 
Arnold died only in 1888. How much a distinguished in- 
heritance may mean is gathered from the fact that a grand- 
daughter of Thomas Arnold and niece of Matthew Arnold, 
Mrs. Humphry Ward, in her novels, has dealt largely with 
problems of religious life, and more particularly of religious 
thoughtfulness. She has done for her generation, in her 
measure, that which George EUot did for hers. 

Martineau 

As the chapter and the book draw to their close we can 
think of no man whose life more nearly spanned the century, 
or whose work touched more fruitfully almost every aspect of 
Christian thoughtfulness than did that of James Martineau. 
W"e can think of no man who gathered into himself more fully 
the significant theological tendencies of the age, or whose 
utterance entitles him to be listened to more reverently as 
seer and saint. He was bom in 1805. He was bred as an 
engineer. He fulfilled for years the calling of minister and 
preacher. He gradually exchanged this for the activity 



VI.] THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 235 

of a professor. He was a religious philosopher in the old 
sense, but he was also a critic and historian. His position 
with reference to the New Testament was partly antiquated 
before his Seat of Authority in Religion^ 1890, made its appear- 
ance. Evolutionism never became with him a coherent and 
consistent assumption. Ethics never altogether got rid of the 
innate ideas. The social movement left him almost un- 
touched. Yet, despite all this, he was in some sense a repre- 
sentative progressive theologian of the century. 

There is a parallel between Newman and Martineau. Both 
busied themselves with the problem of authority. Criticism 
had been fatal to the apprehension which both had inherited 
concerning the authority of Scripture. From that point on- 
ward they took divergent courses. The arguments which 
touched the infallible and oracular authority of Scripture, for 
Newman established that of the Church ; for Martineau they 
had destroyed that of the Church four hundred years ago. 
Martineau's sense, even of the authority of Jesus, reverent 
as it is, is yet no pietistic and mystical view. The authority 
of Jesus is that of the truth which he speaks, of the good- 
ness which dwells in him, of God himself and God alone. 
A real interest in the sciences and true learning in some of 
them made Martineau able to write that wonderful chapter 
in his Seat of Authority, which he entitled ' God in Nature.' 
Newman could see in nature, at most a sacramental sugges- 
tion, a symbol of transcendental truth. 

The Martineaus came of old Huguenot stock, which in 
England belonged to the liberal Presbyterianism out of which 
much of British Unitarianism came. The righteousness of 
a persecuted race had left an austere impress upon their 
domestic and social life. Intellectually they inherited the 
advanced liberalism of their day. Harriet Martineau's earlier 
piety had been of the most fervent sort. She reacted vio- 
lently against it in later years. She had little of the poetic 
temper and gentleness of her brother. She described one 
of her own later works as the last word of philosophic atheism. 
James was, and always remained, of deepest sensitiveness 
and reverence and of a gentleness which stood in high con- 



236 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

trast with his powers of conflict, if necessity arose. Out of 
Martineau's years as preacher in Liverpool and London came 
two books of rare devotional quality, Endeavours after the 
Christian Life, 1843 and 1847, and Hours of Thought on Sacred 
Things, 1873 and 1879. Almost all his life he was identified 
with Manchester College, as a student when the college was 
located at York, as a teacher when it returned to Man- 
chester and again when it was removed to London. With its 
removal to Oxford, accomplished in 1889, he had not fully 
sympathised. He believed that the university itself must some 
day do justice to the education of men for the ministry in other 
churches than the Anglican. He was eighty years old when 
he published his Types of Ethical Theory, eighty-two when 
he gave to the world his Study of Religion, eighty-five when 
his Seat of Authority saw the light. The effect of this post- 
ponement of publication was not wholly good. The books 
represented marvellous learning and ripeness of reflection. 
But they belong to a period anterior to the dates they 
bear upon their title-pages. Martineau's education and 
his early professional experience put him in touch with the 
advancing sciences. In the days when most men of pro- 
gressive spirit were carried off their feet, when materialism 
was flaunted in men's faces and the defence of religion was 
largely in the hands of those who knew nothing of the sciences, 
Martineau was not moved. He saw the end from the begin- 
ning. There is nothing finer in his latest work than his early 
essays — ' Nature and God,' ' Science, Nescience and Faith,' 
and ' Religion as affected by Modem Materialism.' He died 
in 1900 in his ninety-fifth year. 

It is difficult to speak of the hving in these pages. Personal 
relations enforce reserve and brevity. Nevertheless, no one 
can think of Manchester College and Martineau without being 
reminded of Mansfield College and of Fairbaim, a Scotchman, 
but of the Independent Church. He also was both teacher 
and preacher all his days, leader of the movement which 
brought Mansfield College from Birmingham to Oxford, by 
the confession both of Anglicans and of Non-conformists 
the most learned man in his subjects in the Oxford of his 



VI.] THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 237 

time, an historian, touched by the social enthusiasm, but a 
reUgious philosopher, par excellence. His Religion and Modern 
Life, 1894, his Catholicism, Roman and Anglican, 1899, his 
Place of Christ in Modern Theology, 1893, his Philosophy of 
the Christian Religion, 1902, and his Studies in Religion and 
Theology, 1910, indicate the wideness of his sympathies and 
the scope of the application of his powers. If imitation 
is homage, grateful acknowledgment is here made of rich 
spoil taken from his books. 

Philosophy took a new turn in Britain after the middle 
of the decade of the sixties. It began to be conceded that 
Locke and Hume were dead. Had Mill really appreciated 
that fact he might have been a philosopher more fruitful and 
influential than he was. Sir Wilham Hamilton was dead. 
Mansel's endeavour, out of agnosticism to conjure the most 
absurdly positivistic faith, had left thinking men more ex- 
posed to scepticism, if possible, than they had been before. 
When Hegel was thought in Germany to be obsolete, and 
everywhere the cry was ' back to Kant,' some Scotch and 
English scholars, the two Cairds and Seth Pringle-Pattison, 
with Thomas Hill Green, made a modified Hegelianism 
current in Great Britain. They led by this path in the 
introduction of their countrymen to later German idealism. 
By this introduction philosophy in both Britain and America 
has greatly gained. Despite these facts, John Caird's Intro- 
duction to the Philosophy of Religion, 1880, is still only a 
religious philosophy. It is not a philosophy of religion. 
His Fundamental Ideas of Christianity, 1896, hardly escapes 
the old antitheses among which theological discussion moved, 
say, thirty years ago. Edward Caird's Critical Philosophy of 
Kant, 1889, and especially his Evolution of Religion, 1892, 
marked the coming change more definitely than did any of 
the labours of his brother. Thomas Hill Green gave great 
promise in his Introduction to Hume, 1885, his Prolegomena 
to. Ethics, 1883, and still more in essays and papers scattered 
through the volumes edited by Nettleship after Green's 
death. His contribution to religious discussion was such 
as to make his untimely end to be deeply deplored. Seth 



238 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [ch. 

Pringle-Pattison's early work, The Development from Kant to 
Hegel, 1881, still has great worth. His Hegelianism and 
Personality, 1893, deals with one aspect of the topic which 
needs ever again to be explored, because of the psychological 
basis which in religious discussion is now assumed. 



James 

The greatest contribution of America to religious discussion 
in recent years is surely William James's Varieties of Religiotcs 
Experience, 1902. The book is unreservedly acknowledged in 
Britain, and in Germany as well, to be the best which we 
yet have upon the psychology of religion. Not only so, it 
gives a new intimation as to what psychology of reKgion 
means. It blazes a path along which investigators are eagerly 
following. Royce, in his Phi Beta Kappa address at Harvard 
in 1911, declared James to be the third representative philo- 
sopher whom America has produced. He had the form of 
philosophy as Emerson never had. He could reaUse whither 
he was going, as Emerson in his intuitiveness never did. He 
criticised the dominant monism in most pregnant way. He 
recurred to the problems which dualism owned but could 
not solve. We cannot call the new scheme duahsm. The 
world does not go back. Yet James made an over-confident 
generation feel that the centuries to which dualism had 
seemed reasonable were not so completely without intelligence 
as has been supposed by some. No philosophy may claim 
completeness as an interpretation of the universe. No more 
conclusive proof of this judgment could be asked than is given 
quite unintentionally in Haeckel's Weltrdthsel. 

At no point is this recall more earnest than in James's 
dealing with the antithesis of good and evil. The reaction 
of the mind of the race, and primarily of individuals, upon 
the fact of evil, men's consciousness of evil in themselves, 
their desire to be rid of it, their belief that there is a dehver- 
ance from it and that they have found that deliverance, is 
for James the point of departure for the study of the actual 
phenomena and the active principle of religion. The truest 



VI.] THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 239 

psychological and philosophical instinct of the age thus sets 
the experience of conversion in the centre of discussion. 
Apparently most men have, at some time and in some way, 
the consciousness of a capacity for God which is unfulfilled, 
of a relation to God unrealised, which is broken and resumed, 
or yet to be resumed. They have the sense that their own 
effort must contribute to this recovery. They have the sense ^ 
also that something without themselves empowers them to' 
attempt this recovery and to persevere in the attempt.. 
The psychology of religion is thus put in the forefront. The 
vast masses of material of this sort which the religious world, 
both past and present, possesses, have been either actually 
unexplored, or else set forth in ways which distorted and 
obscured the facts. The experience is the fact. The best 
science the world knows is now to deal with it as it would 
deal with any other fact. This is the epoch-making thing, 
the contribution to method in James's book. James was 
born in New York in 1842, the son of a Swedenborgian theo- 
logian. He took his medical degree at Harvard in 1870. 
He began to lecture there in anatomy in 1872 and became 
Professor of Philosophy in 1885. He was a Gifford and a 
Hibbert Lecturer. He died in 1910. 

When James's thesis shall have been fully worked out, 
much supposed investigation of primitive religions, which is 
really nothing but imagination concerning primitive religions, 
will be shown in its true worthlessness. We know very 
little about primitive man. What we learn as to primitive 
man, on the side of his religion, we must learn in part from 
the psychology of the matured and civilised, the present 
living, thinking, feeling man in contact with his religion. 
Matured religion is not to be judged by the primitive, but 
the reverse. The real study of the history of religions, the 
study of the objective phenomena, from earliest to latest 
times, has its place. But the history of religions is per- 
verted when it takes for fact in the life of primitive man 
that which never existed save in the imagination of twen- 
tieth century students. Early Christianity, on its inner and 
spiritual side, is to be judged by later Christianity, by present 



240 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT [oh. 

Christianity, by the Christian experience which we see and 
know to-day, and not conversely, as men have always claimed. 
The modern man is not to be converted after the pattern 
which it is alleged that his grandfather followed. For, first, 
there is the question as to whether his grandfather did con- 
form to this pattern. And beyond that, it is safer to try to 
understand the experience of the grandfather, whom we do 
not know, by the psychology and experience of the grandson, 
whom we do know, with, of course, a judicious admixture of 
knowledge of the history of the nineteenth century, which 
would occasion characteristic differences. The modem saint 
is not asked to be a saint like Francis. In the first place, how 
do we know what Francis was like ? In the second place, the 
experience of Francis may be most easily understood by the 
aid of modern experience of true revolt from worldliness and 
of consecration to self-sacrifice, as these exist among us, 
with, of course, the proper background furnished by the 
history of the thirteenth century. Souls are one. Our souls 
may be, at least in some measure, known to ourselves. Even 
the souls of some of our fellows may be measurably known 
to us. What are the facts of the religious experience ? 
How do souls react in face of the eternal ? iTie experience 
of religion, the experience of the fatherhood of God, of 
the sonship of man, of the moving of the spirit, is surely 
one experience. How did even Christ's great soul react, 
experience, work, will, and suffer ? By what possible means 
can we ever know how he reacted, worked, willed, suffered ? 
In the literature we learn only how men thought that 
he reacted. We must inquire of our own souls. To be 
sure, Christ belonged to the first century, and we live 
in the twentieth. It is possible foi us to learn something 
of the first century and of the concrete outward conditions 
which caused his life to take the shape which it did. We 
learn this by strict historical research. Assuredly the 
supreme measure in which the spirit of all truth and good- 
ness once took possession of the Nazarene, remains to us 
a mystery unfathomed and unfathomable. Dwelling in 
Jesus, that spirit made through him a revelation of the 



VI.] THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 241 

divine such as the world has never seen. Yet that mystery- 
leads forth along the path of that which is intelligible. And, 
in another sense, even such religious experience as we our- 
selves may have, poor though it be and sadly limited, leads 
back into the same mystery. 

It was with this contention that religion is a fact of the 
inner life of man, that it is to be understood through conscious- ' 
ness, that it is essentially and absolutely reasonable and yet 
belongs to the transcendental world, it was with this con- 
tention that, in the person of Immanuel Kant, the history 
of modem religious thought began. It is with this contention, 
in one of its newest and most far-reaching applications in 
the work of William James, that this history continues. For 
no one can think of the number of questions which recent 
years have raised, without realising that this history is by 
no means concluded. It is conceivable that the changes 
which the twentieth century will bring may be as noteworthy 
as those which the nineteenth century has seen. At least 
we may be grateful that so great and sure a foundation has 
been laid. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

CHAPTER I 

Wernle, Paul. Einfuhrung in das theologische Studium, Tubingen, 

2. Aufl., 1911. 
Die Kultur der Gegenwart. Th. I., Abth. iv. 1. Geschichte der 

Christlichen Religion, v. Wellhausen, Jiilicher, Harnack u. A., 

2. Aufl. Berlin, 1909. 
Die Kultur der Gegenwart. Th. I., Abth. iy. 2. Systematische 

Christliche Religion^ v. Troeltsch, Herrmann, Holtzmann u. A., 

2. Aufl. Berlin, 1909. 
Pfleiderer, Otto. The Development of Theology in Germany since 

Kant, and its Progress in Great Britain since 1825. Transl., J. 

Frederick Smith. London, 1893. 
LiCHTENBERGER, F. Histoirc des Idees Religieuses en Allemagne depuis 

le milieu du XVIIP siecle a nos jours. Paris, 1873. Transl., 

with notes, W. Hastie. Edinburgh, 1889. 
Adeney, W. F. a Century of Progress in Religious Life and Thought. 

London, 1901. 
Harnack, Adolf. Das Wesen des Christenthums. Berlin, 1900. 

Transl., What is Christianity F T. B. Saunders. London, 1901. 
Stephen, Leslie. History of English Thought in the Eighteenth 

Century. 2 vols. London, 3rd ed., 1902. 
Troeltsch, Ernst. Art. *Deismus' in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyclopadie 

fur Protestantische Theologie und Kirche. 3. Aufl. Leipzig, 4. Bd., 

1898, s. 532 f. : art. *Aufklarung,' 2. Bd., 1897, s. 225 f. ; art. 

'Idealismus, deutscher,' 8. Bd., 1900, s. 612 f. 
MiRBT, Carl. Art. *Pietismus' in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyclopadie, 15. 

Bd., 1904, s. 774 f. 
RiTSCHL, Albrecht. GcscMchte des Pietismus, 3 Bde. Bonn, 1880- 

1886. 



CHAPTER II 

WiNDELBAND, W. Die Gcschichte der neueren Philosophie in ihrem 
Zusammenhang mit der allgemeinen Kultur und den besonderen 
Wissenschaften. 2 Bde. Leipzig, 1899. 

HoFFDiNG, Harold. Geschichte der neueren Philosophie. Uebersetzt 
V. Bendixen. 2 Bde. Leipzig, 1896. 

848 



244 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT 

EucKKN, Rudolf. Die Lehensanschauungen der grossen Denker. 8. 

Aufl. Leipzig, 1909. Transl., The Problem of Human Life as viewed 

by the Great Thinkers, by W. S. Hough and W. R. Boyce Gibson. 

New York, 1910. 
Pringle-Pattison, a. Seth. The Development from Kant to Hegel, 

London, 1881. 
Drews, Arthur. Die Deutsche Spekulation seit Kant, 2 Bde. Berlin, 

1893. 
RoYCE, JosiAH. The Spirit of Modern Philosophy, Boston, 1893. 

The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, Boston, 1885. The World 

and the Individual, 2 vols. New York, 1901 and 1904. 
Paulsen, Frtedrich. Immanuel Kant, sein Lebtn und seine Lehre. 

Stuttgart, 3. Aufl., 1899. Transl., Creighton and Lefever. New 

York, 1902. 
Caird, Edward. A Critical Account of the Philosophy of Kant : with 

an Historical Introduction. Glasgow, 1877. 
Fischer, Kuno. Hegels Leben, Werke und Lehre, 2 Bde. Heidel- 
berg, 1901. 
Siebeck, Hermann. Lehrbuch der Religionsphilosophie, Freiburg, 

1893. 
EucKEN, Rudolf. Der Wahrheitsgehalt der Religion, Leipzig, 4. Aufl., 

1906. Transl., Jones. London, 1911. 
Tiele, C. p. Compendium der Religionsgesehichte, Uebersetzt v. 

Weber. 3. Aufl. umgearbeitet v. Soderblom. Breslau, 1903. 



CHAPTER III 

Von Frank, H. R. Geschichie und Kritik der neueren Theologie ins- 

besondere der systematischen seit Schleiermacher, Hrsg. v. Schaar- 

schmidt. Erlangen, 1898. 
ScHWARZ, Carl. Zicr Geschichte der neusten Theologie, Leipzig, 4. 

Aufl., 1869. 
Kattenbusch, Ferdinand. Von Schleiermacher zu RitschL Giessen, 

1892. 
Brown, William Adams. Hie Essence of Christianity : a Study in the 

History of Definition. New York, 1902. 
Dilthey, Wilhelm. Leben Schleiermachers, 1. Bd. Berlin, 1870. 
Gass, Wilhelm. Geschichte der Protestantischen Dogmatik, 4 Bde. 

Leipzig, 1854-67. 
Garvie, Alfred. The Ritschlian Theology, 2nd ed. Edinburgh, 1902. 
Herrmann, W. Der evangelische Glaube und die Theologie Albrecht 

Ritschls, Marburg, 1896. 
Pfleiderer, Otto. Die Ritschlsche Theologie kritisch bileuchtet, 

Braunschweig, 1891. 
Kaftan, Julius. Dogmatik, Tiibingen, 4. Aufl., 1901. 
Stevens, George B. The Christian Doctrine of Salvation. New 

York, 1905. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 246 



CHAPTER IV 

Carpenter, J. Estlin. The Bible in the Nineteenth Century, London, 

1903. 
Gardner, Percy. A Historic View of the New Testament London, 

1901. 
JuLiCHER, Adolf. Einleitung in das Neue Testament Freiburg, 

6. Aufl. 1906. TransL, Miss Janet Ward. 1904. 
Moore, Edward Caldwell. The New Testament in the Christian 

Church, New York, 1904. 
LiETZMANN, Hans. Wie wurden die Bucher des neuen Testaments heilige 

Schrift? Tubingen, 1907. 
LoiSY, A. L'^vangile et V^glise, Paris, 2nd ed., 1903. TransL, London, 

1904. 
Wernle, Paul. Die Anfdnge unserer Religion. Tiibingen, 1901. 
Schweitzer, Albert. Von Reimarus zu WredCy eine Geschichte der 

Leben-Jesu-Forschung, Tiibingen, 1906. 
Sanday, William. The Life of Christ in Recent Research, Oxford, 

1907. 
Holtzmann, Oskar. NeU'Testamentliche Zeitgeschichte, Freiburg, 

2. Aufl, 1906. 
Driver, Samuel R. Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testa- 
ment Edinburgh, 2nd ed., 1909. 
Wellhausen, Julius. Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels, Berlin, 

5. Aufl., 1899. 
BuDDE, Karl. The Religion of Israel to the Exile, New York, 1899. 
Kautsch, E. Abriss der Geschichte des alt-testamentlichen Schriftthums 

in seiner ' Heilige Schrift des Alten Testaments.^ Freiburg, 1894. 

TransL, J. J. Taylor, and published separately. New York, 

1899. 
Smith, W. Robertson. The Old Testament in the Jewish Church. 

Glasgow, 2nd ed., 1892. The Prophets of Israel, 2nd ed., 1892. 



CHAPTER V 

Merz, John. A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth 

Century, Vols. 1 and 2, Edinburgh, 1904 and 1903. 
White, Andrew D. The History of the Warfare of Science with 

Theology in Christendom,, 2 vols. New York, 1896. 
Otto, Rudolf. Naturalistische und religiose Weltansicht, Tiibingen, 

2. Aufl., 1909. 
Ward, James. Naturalism and Agnosticism, 2 toIs. London, 1899. 
Flint, Robert. Agnosticism, Edinburgh, 1903. 
Tulloch, John. Modern Theories in Philosophy and Religion, 

Edinburgh, 1884. 
Martineau, James. Essays, Reviews and Addresses, Vols. 1 and 3 

London, 1890. 



246 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT 

BouTROUX, Emile. Science et Religion dans la Philosophie content- 

poraine, Paris, 1908. Transl., Nield. London, 1909. 
Flint, Robert. Socialism. London, 1895. 

Peabody, Francis G. Jesus Christ and the Social Question. New 
York, 1905. 

CHAPTER VI 

Hunt, John. Religious Thought in England xn the Nineteenth 

Century. London, 1896. 
TuLLOCH, John. Movements of Religious Thought in Britain during 

the Nineteenth Century, London, 1885. 
Benn, Alfred William. The History of English Rationalism in the 

Nineteenth Century. 2 vols. London, 1906. 
HuTTON, Richard H. Essays on some of the Modem Guides to Eng- 
lish Thought in Matters of Faith. London, 1900. 
Mellone, Sidney H. Leaders of Religious Thought in the Nineteenth 

Century. Edinburgh, 1902. 
Brooke, Stopford A. Theology in the English Poets. London, 

1896. 
Scudder, Vida D. The Lift of the Spirit in the Modern English 

Poets. Boston, 1899. 
Church, R. W. The Oxford Movement: Twelve Years, 1833-1845. 

London, 1904. 
Fairbairn, Andrew M. Catholicism, Roman and Anglican. New 

York, 1899. 
Ward, Wilfrid. Life and Times of Cardinal Wiseman. 2 vols. 

5th ed. London, 1900. 
Ward, Wilfrid. lAfe of John Henry, Cardinal Newman. 2 vols. 

London, 1912. 
DoLLiNGER, J. J. Ignaz VON. Das Papstthum : Neubearbeitung von 

Janus: Der Papst und das Concil, von J. Friedrich. Miinchen, 

1892. 
Gout, Raoul. L^ Affaire Tyrrell. Paris, 1910. 
Sabatier, Paul. Modernism. Transl., Miles. New York, 1908. 
Stanley, Arthur P. The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, 

2 vols. London, 13th ed., 1882. 
Brooke, Stopford A. Life and Letters of Frederick W. Robertson, 

2 vols. London, 1891. 
Abbott, Evelyn and Campbell, Lewis. Life and Letters of Benjamin 

Jowett. 2 vols. London, 1897. 
Drummond, James, and Upton, C. B. Life and Letters of James 

Martineau. 2 vols. London, 1902. 
Allen, Alexander V. G. Life and Letters of Phillips Brooks. 

2 vols. New York, 1900. 
MuNQER, Theodore T. Horace Bushnell, Preacher and Theologian, 

Boston, 1899. 



INDEX 



Abelard, Jesrus, death of, 106. 
Agnosticism, 152, 162, 164. 
America, 22, 205. 

Anselm, satisfaction, doctrine of, 105. 
Arnold, M., 196, 232. 

T., 199, 200. 

Athanasius, 146. 

Atonement and reconciliation, 108. 

Baur, 118; as historian, 136; the 
fourth Gospel, 121 ; New Testament, 
view of the, 121 ; Paul, 120. 

Blake, William, 195. 

Broad Church, the, 224. 

Brooks, Phillips, 224, 

Browning, 196. 

Budde, 132. 

Burns, 195. 

Bushnell, 208 ; atonement 209 ; divinity 
of Christ, 209 ; revivalism, 208 ; theory 
of language, 209. 

Butler, Analogy f 193. 

Byron, 196. 

Caird, E., 237. 

J., 237. 

Calvinism, 201, 206, 208. 

Campbell, J. M., 201, 203. 

Canon of the Old Testament, 132 ; of 

the New Testament, 123. 
Carlyle, 228. 

Catholic Revival, the, 211. 
Cause, idea of, 168. 
Channing 205. 
Clough, A. H., 196. 
Colenso, 227. 
Coleridge, 16, 197 ; his philosophy, 197 ; 

the Scriptures, 199. 



Comte, 17, 156 ; authority, idea of, 161 ; 
humanity, worship of, 160 ; immor- 
tality, 162 ; materialism, 158, 160 ; 
philosophy, 160 ; religion, 162 ; 
social progress, laws of, 158; the 
three stages, 159. 

Oowper, 195. 

Criticism, biblical, 4, 12, 16, 113. 

Darwin, 13, 154. 

Deism, 23. 

Doctrine, 7 ; history of, 136. 

Dogma, 7. 

Dollinger, 222. 

Drummond, Henry, 174. 

Dualism, 64. 

Election, dogma of, 105. 

Emerson, 230. 

Energy, conservation of, 171. 

England, 21. 

Erskine, Thomas, 201, 

Eucken, 186. 

Evangelicals, the, 194. 

Evolution, 167, 170, 172 ; social, 173. 

Essays and Reviews^ 225. 

Fairbairn, a. M., 186, 220, 236. 
Fichte, 56 ; atheism, 58 ; idealism, 57 ; 

monism, 59. 
Force, 166. 
France, 19. 

Fremantle, W. H., 73, 186. 
Froude, R. H., 215. 

Gardner, Percy, 177. 
Germany, 20. 
Goethe, 37. 

247 



248 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT 



Great Britain, 191. 

Green, T. H., 237. 

Grotius, satisfaction, doctrine of, 106. 

Guilt, inherited, 104. 

Hampden, R.D., 200. 

Harnack, 140 ; Christianity, spread of, 

138, transformation of, 139 ; church 

organisation, 142 ; doctrine, history 

of, 141 ; Jesus, the gospel of, 143 ; 

New Testament canon, 126, 142 ; 

trinity, doctrine of the, 145. 
Harvard College, 205, 209, 231. 
Hatch, Edwin, 143. 
Hedonism, 47. 
Hegel, 66 ; antithesis, law of, 68 ; 

Church, the, 72 ; intellectualism, 74 ; 

Jesus, 70 ; pre-existence, the, 70 ; 

redemption, 72 ; the world as object 

of, 72 ; trinity, 67. 
Herder, 35. 
Herrmann, 100; Jesus, inner life of, 

101 ; virgin birth, 101 ; revelation, 

historical facts of, 102. 
History, 9, 29. 
Hoffman, 88. 
Holtzmann, Oscar, 129. 
Huxley, 167, 169; moral progress, 

174. 

Idealism, aesthetic, 33. 
Individual, question of the, 187. 
Infallibility, 222. 

Israel, history of, 133; literature of, 
134. 

James, William, 238. 

JansenisiQ, 31. 

Jesuits, the, 19. 

Jesus, early Christian view of, 147; 

life of, 127. 
Jowett, B.,225. 

Kaftan, justification, 107; redemp- 
tion, 106 ; sin, 102. 

Kant, 12, 25, 39 ; argument, the moral, 
52 ; atonement, 55 ; dualism, 48 ; 
evil, radical, 49 ; freedom, 49, 61 ; 



idea of God, 51 ; idealism, 42 ; 
immanence, 53 ; immortality, 61 ; 
imperative, the categorical, 49 ; 
Jesus, 54 ; knowledge, theory of, 46 ; 
morality and religion, 49, 74 ; philo- 
sophy, critical, 40 ; reason, the 
practical, the pure, 42 ; revelation, 
50 ; sacrifice, vicarious, 55 ; salva- 
tion, 64 ; scepticism, 56 ; world, the 
transcendental, 42. 

Keble, 214. 

Kenosis, the, 89. 

Kidd, B., 174. 

Le Maistre, 211. 
Lessing, 50. 
Lipsius, 88. 
Locke, 193, 197. 
Lotze, 90. 

Mackintosh, 177. 
Mansel, 237. 
Martineau, H., 156, 285. 

J., 158, 234; authority, the idea 

of, 235 ; spiritual philosophy, 236, 
Materialism, 158, 160. 
Maurice, F. D., 204. 
Mechanism, 172. 
Methodism, 31. 
Miracles, the, 175. 
Modernism, 221. 
Monism, 47. 
Moravians, 32. 

Naturalism, 162. 

Natural sciences, the, 151. 

Neander, 137. 

Neoplatonists, 70. 

Newman, J. H., 21, 214; authority, 

217 ; Catholicism, 219 ; Church, the, 

218 ; experience, doctrine of, 218 ; 

scepticism, 218. 
New Testament, criticism of the, 

113. 
Nicene Creed, the, 146. 

Oriel School, the, 21, 200. 
Oxford movement, the, 21, 212. 



INDEX 



249 



Old Testament canon, 130 ; criticism, 
130. 

Pfleidkrer, 88, 116, 128, 1»2, 201. 

Philosophy, 4, 9, 15, 29 ; idealistic, 39. 

Pietism, 30. 

Poets, the English, 192. 

Positivism, 152, 156. 

Priestley, 18. 

Pringle-Pattison, 238. 

Progress, idea of, 188. 

Punishment, 108. 

Pusey, 215. 

Rationalism, 8, 15, 25, 34. 

Reaction, 19, 211. 

Reformation, the, 1, 

Religion, history of, 153; philosophy 
of, 153 ; psychology of, 289. 

Renaissance, 2. 

Renan, Jesus, life of, 127. 

Revelation and reason, 110. 

R^ville, 129. 

Ritachl, 89 ; empiricism, 94 ; justifica- 
tion, 94 ; knowledge, theory of, 90 ; 
metaphysics, 98 ; method, 95 ; 
mysticism, 98 ; reconciliation, 94 ; 
redemption, 93 ; revelation, 100 ; 
salvation, social interpretation of, 
95 ; scripture, 97 ; sin, 104 ; value 
judgments, 90 ; work of Christ, 92. 

Robertson, F. W., 223. 

Roman Church in England, 214. 

Rothe, 89. 

Rousseau, 48. 

ScHBLLiNG, 60; monism, 63; nature, 

philosophy of, 61. 
Schleiermacher, 74; youth of, 33; 

Christ, place of, 81, 82 ; Church, the. 



81 ; Discourses^ the, 76 ; ethics, basis 
of, 79 ; feeling, religion of, 75 ; 
immortality, 79 ; Jesus, 84 ; sinless- 
ness of, 85 ; miracles, 87 ; pantheism, 
78; salvation 83; Scripture, 86; 
sin, 84. 

Sciences, natural, 5, 13, 17, 28 ; social, 
152, 183. 

Scripture, 45. 

Seeley, J. R., 186. 

Shelley, 196. 

Siebeck, 190. 

Sin, doctrine of, 103. 

Socialism, 155. 

Social questions, 185. 

Spencer, H. , 17, 162 ; absolute, the, 166 ; 
evolution, 167, 171 J God, knowable- 
ness of, 166. 

Spinoza, 80. 

Strauss, 114, 116. 

Tennyson, 196. 

Thought, Christian, 5. 

Tracts for the Times, 216. 

Troeltsch, 27. 

Tubingen School, the, 118, 123. 

Ullmann, 117. 

Unitarianism, 18, 206, 235 ; American, 
206, 210. 

Vatkb, 131. 

Weizsackeb, 138. 
Wellhausen, 133. 
Wesley, J., 194. 
Williams, Rowland, 226, 
Wordsworth, 195. 

Yale Colleqe, 208, 209. 



Studies in Theology 

A New Series of Hand-books, being aids to interpretation 

in Biblical Criticism for the use of Ministers, 

Theological Students and general readers. 



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THE aim of the series is described by the general title. 
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A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

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PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. By the Rev. Hastings Rash- 
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REVELATION AND INSPIRATION. By the Rev. James Orr, 
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CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL QUESTIONS. By the Rev. Will- 
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CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION. By 

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PROTESTANT THOUGHT BEFORE KANT. By A. C. 

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THE CHRISTIAN HOPE: A STUDY IN THE DOCTRINE 
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A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

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of Hebrew and Old Testament Exegesis, Mansfield College, Oxford. 
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HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT. By the 

Rev. Edward Caldwell Moore, D.D., Parkman Professor of 
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